


The Power A Name Can Hold

by Franeridan



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-09
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-03-06 20:48:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3148091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Franeridan/pseuds/Franeridan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You need a ride?” were Kagami's first words to the man, and the other shifted a bit on his feet, wriggled his nose, and then nodded – Taiga had the feeling that he had just stopped himself from making a snarky comeback, by the way the space between his fine brows had wrinkled up behind his glasses, by how his mouth had opened just the slightest bit and then closed again without uttering a single sound.[...]<br/>“Where to?” he asked, scarlet eyes steadily pointed on the other's face, and the guy hummed for a couple of seconds, tilting his head to the side.<br/>“As far away as you'll take me, I guess.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Power A Name Can Hold

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is my first time posting something on this site, ando also my first time writing something as long as this damn monster - it took me two whole weeks to write and I like it, I just hope you guys do as well! There are lots of cliche situations in this thing tbh, but most of them are things I've always wanted to write about so whatever, I'm happy with it!   
> If you find errors let me know, it's most probably because English isn't my first language AND because I admit at some point I couldn't look at this thing anymore and gave up on the last proofreading halfway through  
> haha

Kagami had seen him around two miles away from the last _Leaving Tokyo_ sign his car had sped past.

On the deserted, poorly lit road, crouching on the ground with a thumb raised and a medium sized duffle bag resting by his side – the lights of his car had shone on the short blue hair, reflected on the ridiculously large sunglasses resting on his nose (and, honestly, who even wears sunglasses in the middle of the night?), and something inside Taiga had told him to stop.

It was a pull at the base of his throat, and an itching on the back on his neck – he furrowed his brows, as the car slowed down, stopping just in front of the man, and wondered what was it, exactly, that he was doing.

Just as strongly as the feeling that he  _needed_ to stop and talk to the guy had gripped at his insides, his mind was yelling at him that this wasn't a good idea  _at all_ , that he had to start the car again and go away as soon as possible.

Sadly enough, listening to his conscious mind had never been exactly his strong point.

As he opened the window on the passenger side, the man lowered his thumb and craned his neck to better look at him, but didn't bother to get to his feet or take off his glasses.

They stared at each other for a long minute, neither of them moving an inch – Taiga furrowed his eyebrows even further, tried to assess how big this guy was, how much of a threat he could be.

Then he sighed, and turned around in his seat to more comfortably look at the still crouching man.

“You need a ride?” were Kagami's first words to him, and the other shifted a bit on his feet, wriggled his nose, and then nodded – Taiga had the feeling that he had just stopped himself from making a snarky comeback, by the way the space between his fine brows had wrinkled up behind his glasses, by how his mouth had opened just the slightest bit and then closed again without uttering a single sound.

He wasn't sure if he appreciated the effort the man put in stopping himself, to be honest. Mostly, Kagami felt like there was a great chance that this guy and he wouldn't get along much, even if he didn't know him at all.

What a weird feeling.

“Where to?” he asked, scarlet eyes steadily pointed on the other's face, and the guy hummed for a couple of seconds, tilting his head to the side.

“As far away as you'll take me, I guess,” he answered, voice smooth and low, sounds deep and drawn out in the middle of the still air of the winter night.

Kagami looked at him for a minute – weighted his answer and the possible meanings behind it, considered his own trip, the reasons that brought him there, how much that man's presence would change the outcome.

“It's _really_ far away, my destination,” he said, narrowing his eyes at him, but the other just shrugged in answer, shifted his weight to sit more comfortably.

“Fine by me,” he mumbled, raising a hand to rub at his reddening nose – the cold air was starting to freeze the insides of the car, making Kagami's knuckles feel as if immersed in ice water.

He glanced at the backseat, his own bag resting against the mess of maps, magazines and papers scattered around, and then back at the man outside.

He sighed.

“Sure,” he said, “whatever. Get in.”

\----

_Aomine_ , was how the man had introduced himself.

Not a first name, not his age or employment, nor the reason behind the trip – and it wasn't like Kagami had been expecting anything different, but it was anyway worth noting.

Not many people avoided the use of their first name during introduction, after all.

Only a surname,  _Aomine_ , leaving the man's lips in a tired drawl as he settled himself in the passenger seat, heavy coat tight around him and legs folded as comfortably as his height let him.

“Kagami,” answered Taiga then, turning the heat up and starting the car again, giving just as much information about himself as the other had.

It wasn't like they needed anything more than that, all in all, and the redhead was more comfortable keeping his name for himself anyway – he would have uttered it as soon as he could have, months prior to that moment, but things change, life happens, and that wasn't the reason for his trip at all, he told himself, the need to talk about it was as close to zero as one could get.

Maybe he was running away. One could have said so, probably.

Not that he cared.

“So, Kagami,” drawled the other after a couple of minutes, one shoulder resting against the window's glass and his eyes cast at the barely visible roadside, “how much _really far away_ are we talking about, exactly?”

Taiga wriggled his nose, tightened his grip on the steering wheel.

“Far,” he answered, the word heavy in his mouth, “as far as this car will take me, and then a little further still.”

He tapped the fingers of his left hand on the wheel, an anxious  _tap-tap-tap_ repeated with regular cadence – moved his eyes on the man at his side for a second, brought them back on the road in front of himself.

“You can leave whenever, once we get far enough for you,” he added, and the man, _Aomine_ , snorted in answer and rolled his eyes.

“What, already getting tired of me?” he asked, amusement dripping from his slightly drawn out vocals, as he moved around just enough to reach out to turn on the radio – Kagami watched him from the corners of his eyes, made his tongue click a little.

“As long as you have money to pay for yourself, you can do whatever.”

“Don't worry,” answered Aomine, as the familiar notes of _Hey Jude_ started to fill the air inside the car, low volume and scratchy sounds, “that's the only thing I have no problems with.”

\----

It was a quarter to three in the morning when Kagami stopped the car – around two hours after the meeting with his new traveling companion, two hours of weirdly easy silence only interrupted by the somewhat dated pop-ish music the station had been insisting on playing.

He stopped the car in the middle of the parking lot of a run-down diner, neon lights hurting his eyes and tired limbs asking him to rest at least for fifteen minutes.

(Or months, or years, or maybe just stop forever, why not, why wouldn't he, he'd been feeling like stopping for so long now.)

(Nine months, twenty-six days and seventeen hours, and he wasn't counting, he truly wasn't.)

(Really.)

He stopped the car and got out, the cold biting at his exposed skin, making his cheeks hurt, his hands feel like they were about to fall off – he needed gloves, he thought to himself, and maybe a scarf or two.

“Let's get something to eat,” he said, hitting the hood of his car with his freezing knuckles and shutting the door as soon as he was sure Aomine had heard him – the man yawned without bothering to cover his own mouth, unfolded himself with strangely elegant, precise motions, and followed him inside with long, lazy strides.

“Why are you wearing sunglasses, anyway?” asked Taiga then, as he sat at a table near the large window and reached out to give a look at the half-destroyed piece of hard paper that was the menu.

Aomine sat before him, another yawn on his lips and arms held tight around his body; he rested his back against the window, head just barely titled to the side, and Kagami found himself realizing for the first time just how built this man actually was: he was hunched over, had been since the start, really, but, even with that and the big coat engulfing him, the redhead could make out the wide shoulders and strong muscles of his neck easily enough.

_I'm still stronger, probably_ , he told himself – just as the thought of  _what if he's dangerous?_ finally crossed his mind. Even if he was, Taiga realized, he wasn't worried in the least. He could hold himself in a fight without much problems, after all.

He kept his scarlet eyes on the other for another couple of seconds still, eyebrows furrowed and mouth set in a tight line, and then turned his attention to the diner (old tables and paint peeling off the walls, one tired waitress behind the counter, another one smoking beside the slightly ajar back-door, two other costumers seated at different tables and an old man just getting inside).

“No reason in particular,” said Aomine then, bringing Taiga's attention back on him and reminding the redhead of a question he had even forgotten had been asked to begin with.

Kagami looked at the other for a moment – at his too big sunglasses and his nicely tan skin, at the hands rubbing against his biceps and the red, probably cold nose – and then moved his attention back on the menu, snorting under his breath and rolling his eyes, amused.

“So what,” he asked, scanning what the diner had to offer and then putting the piece of paper back in the middle of the table, “you just like going around without actually seeing anything and hitting stuff you didn't notice was there?”

He looked at Aomine's face, as the man's eyebrows drew in and his mouth set in a scowl, finding his own lips turning into a barely there smirk – then, just as words started forming on the other's tongue, the once-smoking-waitress made her way to their table, tired eyes and sauce-stained uniform shirt.

“Welcome to _Akabi_ , what can I get you tonight,” she drawled in an expressionless voice, and Aomine clicked his tongue and let himself fall once again against the window, pulling his arms tighter around himself.

Taiga moved his eyes on the girl – took in the yellow streak of hair between raven locks, the dark, neatly applied eye-liner, the beginning of a word written just under her left clavicle on the patch of skin barely left visible by the shirt, the silver bend around her left ring finger – then he turned back to look at the man in front of him, and Aomine scoffed, sinking a bit further into his coat.

“A coffee, black,” he answered, sulk vaguely audible in his tone, and Kagami nearly couldn't stop himself from snorting at the childish behavior of the other man.

“Six servings of fried eggs and bacon for me, thanks,” he ordered instead, tapping his fingers on the table and offering an half-smile to the waitress, “and a black coffee as well.”

It wasn't a new reaction, the raised brow both the woman and Aomine reserved him, so he didn't really pay attention to it – the waitress seemed to shrug it off quite fast, anyway, and went away assuring them that she'd soon bring them the ordered coffees.

The _are you really gonna eat all that stuff?_ that came right after from the blue haired man was also a known reaction, and Kagami answered with a simple shrug, moving his eyes towards the parking lot and watching as the first raindrops started to wet the surface of the broken asphalt.

\----

The eggs and bacon were barely enough to fill his empty stomach – they weren't that good either, nor was the coffee, and Kagami a bit regretted his decision to stop there, at _Akabi_ , just to have the taste of sand fill his mouth and spend another hour immersed in weird silence with his weird companion in a weird diner in the middle of nowhere.

He could have been somewhere, now, somewhere further away from the home he was leaving behind – instead, he was sitting at an old table inside a barely together diner, with a stranger in front of himself and the sky falling with the rain outside the door.

“We can't get back on the road until it lets up at least a little,” Taiga mumbled in his right hand, tracing circles on the condensation on the window with his left index, and Aomine hummed from the other side of the wooden surface, eyes still hidden by the shades, arms crossed on the table and chin resting atop them.

“And ain't that a pain,” he complained, tone tired and voice even lower than usual – Kagami found himself nodding at the other, as the same waitress as before set other two terrible coffees in front of them and wished them a good dine.

The redhead thanked her once more, reaching out to grab the cup and then pulling a face as the awful taste filled his mouth again – then he turned around to properly look at Aomine, furrowing his eyebrows, biting slowly on his lower lip.

“Say,” Kagami started, stopping and waiting to be sure to have the other's attention – the blue haired man raised his head slightly, arching a brow to show he was listening, and Taiga tilted his head to the side, watching the man intently, “if I let you ask me one thing, can I ask you something in return?”

Aomine's shoulders stiffened a little for a single moment, surprised at the sudden request, and then he furrowed his eyebrows, studying Kagami for a couple of minutes.

“Sure,” he said in the end, shrugging his shoulders and sitting on his chair straighter, crossing his arms in front of his chest, “as long as it's not _what's your name_ or anything related to _why do you want to get away_ , then go on. I'll answer.”

Taiga kept silent for a moment longer – considering the conditions the man had given, asking himself how many different things they could mean. Then he shook his head, and raised the cup of coffee to his lips one more time.

Honestly, there was only one thing he really wanted to know about the other, in that moment.

“Why are you wearing those sunglasses in the middle of the night?” he asked, taking then a sip from his coffee, marveling once again at just how disgusting it actually was.

Aomine looked at him with raised brows and mouth slightly opened in surprise for nearly a whole minute – then he snorted, raising a hand to cover his mouth as giggles started softly flowing from it, shoulders shaking and back hunched forward.

“Really?” he asked, surprise tinting his still amused tone, “that's really, _truly_ the one thing you wanna know?”

It was weird, watching Aomine laugh. It pulled a bit at his heart, Taiga realized – made him want to smile, snap a picture of the relaxed features and cherish it as a work of art.

(His right hand moved on his own towards the duffel-bag at his side, towards the pocket where he knew his camera rested – it was habit, something he had been trying to suppress for a while now.)

(Nine months, twenty-six days and eighteen hours, but, honest, he wasn't counting.)

Something in that scene, the way the blue haired man closed on himself, maybe, or how quiet the laugh was, had Kagami think that this wasn't something people could usually see. It was a strangely addicting sight.

“You're weird, man,” Aomine mumbled after a bit, having Taiga snap out of his thoughts and shrug at the sentence.

“Whatever, you said you'd tell,” he retorted, and a nod and an amused _sure, sure_ were what he received in answer.

“I've got a black eye,” explained Aomine, resting his chin once more on his crossed arms and watching Kagami with his head tilted upwards, “real big bruise, an ugly green-yellow-purple-ish kinda color, all over the left side of my face. Thought no one'd let me in their car if they thought I was a thug.”

As he mentioned it, Taiga narrowed his eyes, inspecting the visible part of his left cheek – maybe he could kind of see it, the bruise.

_Uh_ , he thought, uncrossing his arms and resting his head on one open palm. That wasn't exactly what he had been expecting – even though he wasn't sure what he  _had_ been expecting, if he had to be honest _._

“Well, are you? A thug, I mean.”

Aomine laughed again.

A noisy laugh, coming from the chest and resounding in the back of his throat, but a short one, less relaxed, not as genuine as his first one.

“One question, you said. It's my turn now,” he reminded the redhead, and Taiga narrowed his eyes – the way the other had evaded his question, the forced laugh and the fast change in topic, all of that made alarm bells ring in the back of his mind, had all his senses on alert – but, after a handful of seconds of silence, he nodded anyway.

He had set the rules, it was just right he'd follow them.

“Right. Shoot.”

“Where are you headed?” Aomine asked fast, still looking at him from below, “specifically, I mean. Not _how far_ , but _where_.”

Kagami kept his eyes on the sunglasses's big lenses for a handful of long, silent seconds – he bit his lower lip, furrowed his eyebrows.

Then he sighed and turned towards the window, finding his car with his eyes and keeping his gaze set on the rain bouncing off its red, metallic surface.

“North,” he answered, a tired sound leaving his lips in a sigh.

“As far north as I can get.”

\----

_There's a motel a couple of miles away_ , the tired-looking-waitress had told them after it became obvious the rain wasn't going to stop any time soon, forty-six minutes and five terrible coffees later.

Kagami had thanked her, keeping his eyes forcibly away from the black word on the girl's skin, while Aomine produced a bundle of notes from one of his coat's pockets and insisted on paying for both.

“You're giving me a ride, after all,” had been his reasoning, and Kagami had narrowed his eyes at the money, but had let him do as he pleased.

It had been hard, finding the motel mentioned by the woman – between the heavy droplets falling from the sky and the nearly completely dark road, it had been hard enough that Aomine had started complaining about it probably not even existing twenty minutes inside the trip – but it had indeed been there, at the end of a narrow, not even asphalted side-road.

A not as old as Kagami had been expecting, medium sized motel, with a really nice lady as the owner and enough hot water to make the cold slip away from Taiga's very bones; it was nice, finally having a place to properly rest, even if only for just a bit.

(He found himself thinking about his home back in Tokyo, and a pang of doubt hit him for a second – doubt about the trip, and his decisions, his reactions – but he forced himself to ignore it.)

(He had to.)

As he got out of the shower, a towel over his shoulders and another around his hips, Kagami caught his reflection in the slightly fogged over mirror set above the sink – he moved an hand to swipe away the condensation from the cold surface, arching a brow at the stubble just barely visible on his chin, at the tips of his bangs starting to be too long for his likings, at the bags under his too tired, redder than usual eyes.

At the clear, too empty space on the skin of his chest, just above his heart.

He thought about the lines shaping a black word on the skin of the diner's waitress, at the silver band around her ring finger, and sighed, lowering his head and raising a hand to mess his wet hair up, looking then back at his own reflection.

It was a weird feeling – as he run an index along his left pectoral, tracing shapes without meanings on the still wet, white skin, Taiga thought about how strange it was, knowing something was missing from his own body and not being even able to tell exactly what it was.

He sighed again, closing his eyes and letting his left arm fall to his side, raising the other to swipe the towel over his hair and thinking about just how  _absurd_ the world he was living in could sometimes get.

If he remembered right, he had been four the first time he had noticed that particular spot on his body.

_Mom_ , he had said, running towards her in just his shorts and closing a small hand around the fabric of her long skirt,  _I think I lost something_ – that was how he had decided to phrase it, the feeling of something missing he had discovered for the first time.

Thinking about it right then, over twenty years later and standing in the middle of even he didn't know exactly where, Kagami found himself snorting at his own, naive self.

_A name_ , his mother had explained to him back then, smile bending her lips and warm fondness in her voice. It wasn't something he had lost, she said, but something he would for sure, one day, find.

“It's the name of someone very special to you. Someone you'll meet, sooner or later – they'll tell you their name, and their name will make you feel whole, as if everything in the world is finally alright.”

Taiga had looked at her, head tilted to the side and eyebrows furrowed, and hadn't really understood, at the time, what she had meant with her words. It was a too complex of a concept for him to wrap his head around, so he had just dismissed it – had nodded, and then had gone to play with his games in his room.

He wished, as he stood in front of the mirror of the bathroom of one of the rooms of a no-name motel miles away from his home, to be able to go back at not seeing  _the name_ as an issue at all.

He wished he could forget about the clear space just above his heart, where the whole world insisted a word was bound to appear, sooner or later – a word designating his belonging to someone he didn't even know yet, letters shaping his future and changing his life.

“I wish I could just go back to when I was still excited about all this,” he mumbled to himself, wearing his boxers and then his trousers, as a heavy sigh left his lungs and shook his tired shoulders.

If only he could even just remember how it felt like, to utter his name to every new person he met, to feel disappointment and at the same time eagerness as he looked at his still unmarked body.

(It had been nine months, twenty-six days and twenty-one hours since last time he had felt like that, and he really wasn't counting, the numbers just registered in his mind without him even realizing.)

(They ticked away in the back of his head, seconds adding to one another, beating time, bringing him forward.)

(So similar to a countdown.)

\----

Aomine, when Taiga came out of the bathroom, was lying on the bed closer to the entrance door – arms crossed under his head, legs dangling from the edge, sunglasses resting beside him on the mattress.

The bruise on the side of his face, Kagami noticed, was as big as the man had described, even uglier than the redhead had imagined. It made his left eye look incredibly swollen, the yellows and greens contrasting strikingly with the tan skin, the blues and purples matching weirdly with the long, midnight lashes and the deep, intense color of the man's eyes – eyes that were pointed directly on the redhead, steady and attentive, and Taiga felt suddenly self-conscious about being shirtless.

He had forgotten for a moment, while closed in the bathroom with only his own thoughts as company, that the tanned man had actually been waiting outside that door. For a second, he hadn't realized that he  _wasn't_ alone, for the first time in far too long, and that the blank space on the left side of his chest wasn't exactly the weirdest thing about his upper body, for however much it could be Taiga's biggest concern.

It felt strange, having those deep blue eyes scrutinize him. They put him on edge.

Then Aomine's shoulders relaxed – his expression softened somehow, and he raised a hand to cover the swollen half of his face.

“Told you it was a big bruise,” he said, lazy smirk bending his lips and showing a hint of too white teeth from behind them – the sound of his voice, somehow amused, maybe too casual, had Kagami snap out of his stupor, and realize that he had stopped moving to stare at the other over a minute before, now.

He rolled his eyes, setting his feet into motion once again and heading towards the other side of the room.

“It's really ugly,” he commented, reaching his own bed and looking for a clean shirt in the bag resting on its top, “your face, I mean.”

Aomine stared.

For a whole minute, propped up on his forearms, eyebrows raised and eyes slightly wider, as Taiga wore a red hoodie and then sat on the mattress, he kept his blue irises on the redhead and didn't move a single inch – then he snorted, letting himself fall back on the bed and closing his lids.

“You're kind of an ass, ain't you,” he said, tone closer to a statement than a question – Kagami didn't answer, resting his back against the closer wall, just next to the window, and moving his scarlet eyes to the rain falling outside.

It hadn't stopped, not had it let up at all – Taiga found himself a bit fascinated by the droplets running down the glass, the water bouncing off the windowsill outside, the sound of it crashing down on the ground all around the motel. He could feel Aomine move behind him, noises of his body shifting on the bed, his steps going around the room, his body hitting the mattress once more, and for a moment Kagami held his breath, waited for the question that was bound to come, sooner or later.

He raised his left hand, circling his own middle and resting the open palm on his right side, and even through the hoodie's thick fabric he could feel the wide outlines of the three symmetrical scars disfiguring him from hip to chest – his fingers closed spasmodically around the red cloth, and he shut his eyes tight, counting to ten and then back, waiting for the other to ask what he surely had been dying to know.

Aomine didn't utter a single word, though, and, when Taiga opened his eyes again, he found him under his chosen bed's covers – eyes shut and mouth parted in what looked like deep sleep.

\----

Why hadn't the blue haired man asked him about the scars, what had he been thinking about as he scrutinized the three slashes – why had he been hitchhiking on such a deserted road, what was up with his black eye, what was about him that had Taiga stop to begin with – those were all questions that stayed with Kagami for the whole night, and then during most part of the next miraculously sunny morning as well.

He was starting to get curious, a little, about the mysterious man traveling with him: he wanted to ask, wanted to  _know_ , but the prospect of having to answer questions of his own had him stop and bite his tongue – talking about his past, even just thinking about it, Kagami wasn't really ready for that.

(It had been nine months and over twenty-seven days, and he wasn't ready, didn't feel even close to it.)

(He started to think he would never be, honestly.)

So he furrowed his brows and stole glances at the man by his side, Taiga, as they listened to the Top 40 of the day, exchanged idle talk and mindless bantering, while he wished he was a bit braver, maybe, and wondered how long he could deal with this man before he'd end up breaking under the pressure of even he didn't know what.

It was strange, as a lot of the things and feelings that came with his unexpected companion were.

Between all the stuff he didn't know about Aomine, and all the secrets he himself was set on keeping for as long as possible, Kagami felt like there was  _something_ – something big, something heavy, something he couldn't put his fingers on. It was something he needed to ask, or something he wanted to be asked, he didn't really know, and it set uncomfortably at the base of his throat, making it hard for him, at times, to breath.

It was a sensation he needed to get rid of, but had no idea how to go about it even if he tried.

“You look tired,” said Aomine out of the blue, as the midday sun slid behind a lone, small cloud high in the sky, and Taiga felt his eyes open wider for a second, his brows shot up without him meaning to.

“Am not,” he mumbled, unsure about what else to say, and the other snorted at his side – a sound in which Kagami could nearly _hear_ the rolling of his blue eyes. It made the redhead frown, somehow annoyed, and his mouth set in a tight scowl.

“You are,” continued the man, as if he hadn't noticed Taiga's suddenly sulky mood at all, “you haven't slept at all last night, have you?”

Which was, after the  _looking tired_ comment, the second thing Kagami expected the other to mention the least: he had been sure Aomine had been deeply asleep the whole time, he hadn't thought he would have noticed at all.

“I'm fine,” he answered, trying to sound sure, but by the way the other man scoffed it probably came out way weaker than he intended.

_Annoying_ , he thought. The way Aomine was reading him was annoying, annoying and mildly uncomfortable. He made to open his mouth – probably complain, or tell the other to just shut up, but the way the tanned man turned around in his seat to properly face him made him stop, had the words stuck at the back of his throat.

“Listen,” he said, as his eyes scanned Kagami and then moved to the landscape running by them, outside the car, “I don't care if you wanna spend your nights sitting on the bed while wistfully looking outside the window, it's fine man, whatever floats your boat,” there was a scoff, somewhere in his tone, and it made Taiga furrow is brows further, had him tighten his hands around the wheel.

Then Aomine let himself fall back against his seat, raised his arms to rest behind his head and moved his eyes to the road before them.

“But dying in a way as idiotic as a car-crash isn't exactly on top of my _To Do_ list, you know” he went on, and Kagami rolled his eyes at him, relaxing his shoulders a little.

“Why don't you start by putting on your belt, then, if you're so worried?” he pointed out, still annoyed at the other's tone – and at the way his feet were now resting on his dashboard, and at the way he still looked somehow stupidly _elegant_ even while sitting in such an messy position, with too many scarves and sweaters and coats on, with his stupidly too big glasses resting between his stupidly unkempt hair and reflecting the light in a way that had Kagami's hands itch to hold his camera.

(It was the second time in less than two days, and it annoyed him  _so much_ .)

(Aomine  _really_ annoyed him, and the fact that he could annoy him to such extents annoyed him even more.)

“Don't make such a scary face,” the blue haired man commented after a while, sneer audible in his voice, and Taiga, for the first time since he had stopped the car the previous night in front of the guy, found himself deeply questioning the decision he had made of letting him in.

\----

The proposal left Aomine's mouth two hours later, just after Kagami had stopped the car to stretch his limbs a little, drink some water, rest for a while.

The sun was already starting to fall lower on the horizon, casting long shadows behind them, making the black birds resting on the lone tree on the other side of the road look strangely ominous – Taiga had his eyes unfocused, gaze lost above the rice field in front of him, while Aomine lay on both the front seats, legs dangling from outside the door, head resting on Kagami's seat, sunglasses once again covering his face.

“Let's switch for a bit,” he said, breaking the silence that had been engulfing them, and the redhead raised a brow at him, unsure about what he exactly meant.

“What?”

“Let me drive for a while,” he explained, tilting his head upwards to look at Kagami, “I just need to keep going north, anyway, I can do that.”

The denial was outside of Taiga's mouth before he could even just properly think about the offer.

“No way in hell,” he answered, turning around to look at the other and furrowing his brows at him.

Aomine, at that, sat up and got out of the car, resting his arms on its top and propping his head on an open palm.

“Why not?” he asked, an eyebrow raised and tone vaguely annoyed, and Kagami crossed his arms over his chest, watched him for a couple of seconds, and then scoffed.

“I don't trust you enough,” he said, keeping his gaze steady, and he could see Aomine rolling his eyes at him even from behind the glasses.

“What are you scared of, that I'll drive both of us to death?” he sneered, and Taiga scoffed an heated _how can I know you won't?_ , which prompted Aomine to growl at him a _why would I even do that_ in annoyance, making the redhead harden his eyes and tighten his lips, while the blue haired man's back straightened in anger.

They looked at each other for a while, both motionless, stubbornly not giving in – then Aomine groaned, letting his forehead hit the top of the car in a distressed motion.

“Come on, man, you're dead tired!” he complained, not raising his head, and Taiga's eyes widened a bit at the exasperated, but nearly pleading tone the man was using.

“You can barely keep your eyes open, and there's no place to rest for miles still,” he kept going, rubbing his nose on the metal, making his glasses sit in an uncomfortable-looking position on his face, “if you get back behind the wheel you're gonna crash us in the middle of that fucking rice field in two minutes top, I'm just asking you to let me make sure I _won't die in the next few hours._ ”

Kagami looked at him, eyes still wide, mouth slightly open, as he got back up and straightened the glasses on his face, crossed his arms over his chest – his eyebrows were furrowed, and his lips were set in a scowl, the tip of his nose was red from the cold, and one of the scarves he was wearing had started falling off, hanging far too low on his body.

He looked like a too big, pouting kid, and Kagami had to clench and unclench his fists a couple of times around his arms to make sure he wouldn't just reach inside the car to pick up his camera and snap a picture.

(This made it three times, three times in less than twenty hours, and Taiga was starting to find it annoying, just how  _photographable_ this man could look.)

“I can't sleep anyway,” Kagami found himself uttering after a few, still seconds – he wasn't really sure why he had said it, what had been the need to, and considering Aomine's raised brows he hadn't been expecting it either.

“Whatever,” he said in answer, relaxing his shoulders and hiding his hands in the oversized coat's pockets, “I'm not saying you gotta sleep, just rest for a while.”

It took Taiga another whole minute of silence and staring, but he ended up nodding his approval – his face was still set in a scowl, and his posture hadn't relaxed one bit, but he moved around the car anyway, sitting in the passenger seat and reluctantly leaving the keys in Aomine's waiting hand.

\----

The tanned man looked weirdly at home, sitting in Taiga's car and driving while humming along to some tune the redhead had never heard before.

As Kagami sat a bit hunched over by his side, arms closed around his middle and one foot raised to rest on the seat, he kept his scarlet, half lidded eyes on the driving man – slowly, as seconds turned into minutes and minutes added up to make an hour, his mind had started relaxing, letting his thoughts flow more freely inside his head.

Aomine looked good.

The proportions of his face, his colors lit by the orange glow of the setting sun, even the swollen eye – he was nice to look at, and somehow put Kagami at ease.

(It had been nearly ten month since last time he had felt like this, and it made him vaguely annoyed, maybe a bit scared, how relaxed a stranger could make him feel.)

(It made him think about the clear space on his chest, about the words his mother had said to him years and years ago, about the name Aomine had decided not to reveal to him.)

(It made him think about nine months and twenty-seven days prior, it had him want to stop thinking altogether.)

“How old are you anyway,” he found himself asking, tone drowsy and lids still half closed, and Aomine's eyes widened on his now uncovered face, his humming stopping abruptly.

“Why do you need to know?” was his answer, a little hesitant, on the defensive – Kagami shrugged, as much as his curled over position let him, and mumbled a tired, half audible _just curious_. It was just a number, how many deeper meanings could it hold? 

The tanned man furrowed his brows a bit, looked as if weighting the pros and cons of answering, and then relaxed his shoulders.

“Twenty-six,” he said, stealing a glance at the redhead, prompting him to answer the same question without actually voicing it.

Kagami hummed, turning slightly around and getting more comfortable – he didn't feel like sleeping, his mind still refusing to calm down just enough for it to happen, but he  _had_ been tired, and spending a whole hour doing nothing but watch the other man drive had opened a gap between his consciousness and the world around him.

It felt soft, somehow warm, and the redhead let himself bask in it for a while, running the other's answer in his head for a bit before answering.

“So just like me,” he said in the end, moving his eyes from Aomine to the road outside, back on his companion and then on his black and white duffel bag resting just behind the driver's seat.

“What if I took a picture of you?” he murmured, red irises once again on the tanned man – on the dying light highlighting his cheekbones, on the blue hair resting messily on his forehead – adding then a soft, barely audible _it's been so long since last time I've wanted to photograph anything_.

At the question, Aomine's shoulders tensed, his eyes widened, and Kagami had the feeling he slowed the car a bit, watched as another vehicle sped past them and then away on the otherwise deserted road.

The tanned fingers tapped on the wheel for a while, as the man's thin eyebrows drew in and his mouth set in a vaguely unhappy line.

“Why would you want to?” he asked in the end, once again cautious, turning for a moment to look at Taiga and bringing then his eyes back on the road, and the redhead shrugged one shoulder, sank a bit further into his seat.

“'m a photographer, after all,” he said, voice tired and low, trying not to think about how weirdly defensive the other was being.

“Even if I don't usually take pics of people,” he added then , as an afterthought.

Aomine stayed silent for a while, stealing glances at the man at his side and then biting his own lips, furrowing his brows, tightening his hold on the steering wheel. He looked distressed, maybe conflicted to some extents, and Kagami's conscious mind knew that it probably depended on his sudden opening up about himself – but he was too tired, too far away from the reality, to actually care.

“What is it that you usually photograph, then?” the smooth voice of the other man asked after a bit, and Kagami thought about it for a while, scrunching up his nose.

“You know,” he answered, keeping his eyes on Aomine's profile, “stuff... and things.”

He didn't really want to think about it, his usual subjects – and, going by how the blue haired man snorted, but didn't press the topic any further, he had probably realized it as well.

“It's fine by me,” he said instead, finally relaxing his posture and settling his eye on the road in front of him, “as long as you keep the pics for yourself.”

For some reason, that answer had Kagami's lips form a small smile. He turned around, resting his head against the glass of the window and thinking about handling a camera again after such a long time of forcing himself not to.

(Nine months, twenty-seven days and nearly six hours of not touching what once had been an extension of his own body, and it scared him, the idea of finally going back to it.)

(But, if the subject was the tanned man now driving Taiga's red car, maybe he could bring himself to do it.)

\----

The afternoon of two days later the rain was falling over them once more. It was a softer rain, nearly invisible compared to the one of their first night together, but it was just as annoying – as far as Kagami was concerned, anyway.

He had stopped the car at a gas station, the hood of his sweater covering him from the small droplets while he made sure the tank was full enough to take them as far as possible before he was forced to step in the cold again – Aomine was still inside, window lowered to talk to the redhead and feet once again on the dashboard.

“I'm not being picky or anything,” he was saying, as he rubbed the back of his left hand on the tip of his cold nose and pushed himself further inside his coat, hiding his chin between the folds of his scarf, “since I'm just an hitchhiker and all.”

“Then just stop complaining,” Kagami answered, rolling his eyes, starting to feel the annoyance rise inside of himself.

“ _What I'm saying_ ,” continued anyway the other, shooting a glare at the redhead from the corner of his eyes and crossing his arms more tightly around himself, “is that you have no clear destination anyway from what you said, so _why north_? It's freezing cold up here already!”

Taiga let his hands sink inside his coat's pocket, wriggled his nose to free it from the wet sensation at least a little, and then tsked at the other.

“If you're not okay with where I'm going then just leave, no one's stopping you,” he grumbled, pushing his face inside the blue scarf Aomine had landed him and kicking the tire in front of him to let some of the annoyance out, somehow.

The blue haired man glowered at him, pushing his feet off the dashboard and turning around to properly set his narrow eyes on the redhead, and Kagami furrowed his brows, set his mouth in a thin line – he wasn't going to give in, Aomine needed to get it ingrained in his stupid, too stubborn head.

“Fine!” the tanned man said in the end, “do whatever the fuck you want, who cares!” he snapped, opening the door of the car and getting to his feet – slamming it shut while still grumbling under his breath and starting to stomp away, towards the small conbini near the station they were using.

In the time the man took to move four steps away from the car, Kagami felt his eyes widen and his heart sink – he held in a deep breath, feeling a painful clutch at his throat and around his stomach, and opened his mouth to talk, even if he didn't really know what exactly he wanted to say.

He didn't want Aomine to leave, that was for sure – he didn't know why, but the idea of never seeing the other man again set uncomfortably inside his mind. He raised a hand to his chest, gripping at the cloth above his heart ( _above the clear space_ , he feigned not to realize), furrowing his brows, biting his lips, and the tanned man was now six steps away, eight feet that looked like miles.

“Are you leaving without your bag?” he asked without thinking, and immediately wished he could take the sentence back – but, before he could open his mouth again, the angry voice of the other had already reached him once more, taking away all the tension and dread from Kagami's body with so much ease that Taiga found himself furrowing his brows even further, at the feeling.

“I'm not leaving, you fucking idiot,” he snapped, shooting another glare at the redhead without actually stopping, “I'm gonna see if they sell any warmers and blankets, since you're set on freezing us to death.”

Taiga opened his mouth to answer, yell at him something for the _idiot_ he had been addressed as, or maybe tell him to be quick or he'd leave him behind, but gave up halfway through. He rolled his eyes, feeling stupid at how relieved he was, and checked how long it would still take for the tank to be full – then he brought his scarlet irises back on Aomine, leaning against the side of his car.

The other man looked small, huddled under so many coats and hoodies as he briskly moved to the other side of the lot, towards the entrance of the shop - the rain was falling softly all around him, orange light of the streetlamps making the drops twinkle, and Kagami subconsciously raised one hand to the camera hanging from his neck, hidden under his coat; in the last two days, Taiga had been keeping it closer to himself, his fingers brushing over its surface whenever he wasn't doing anything else – he still hadn't given in to the desire of photographing Aomine, though.

(He couldn't bring himself to, honestly. The strength simply wasn't there.)

He sighed, letting his arm fall back at his side and hiding the hand inside his pocket, and then inhaled deeply, pushing his nose between the scarf's fabric – it smelled of that dry smell that always lingered when the air was too cold, and of some kind of cleaning product he was familiar with, but couldn't pinpoint.

It also smelled of the other man, even if Kagami didn't know exactly _what_ was the smell that was filling his nostrils, or why he was associating it with Aomine; it put him at ease, though, and he closed his eyes for a moment, letting himself sink into that strangely warm feeling.

The blue haired man came out of the store not even a full minute after he had entered it.

He moved briskly towards Taiga, sunglasses now back on his nose and hiding half his face, and the redhead raised an eyebrow at that and at his still empty hands.

“Couldn't find anything?” he asked, surprise and disbelief tinting his voice – the other didn't stop to answer, though; he opened the passenger's door, sliding inside the car with hurried motions, curling on himself as much as possible.

“Yeah, they didn't have anything – c'mon let's go, tank's full,” he said, somewhat tense set to his shoulders and back. Kagami narrowed his eyes at him, furrowed his brows.

“Did you even actually check? You've been in there not even a whole minute,” he pointed out, turning his gaze towards the shop and then back on Aomine, and the man tsked under his breath, let himself sink down on his seat.

“Yeah, yes, I told you, come _on_ ,” he pressed, his eyes set on the entrance of the conbini, and Taiga hardened his features further, opened his mouth to ask what was going on – but Aomine's expression, teeth biting at his lips and thin eyebrows drawn in the middle, had the words die in his throat.

He groaned, pushing both his freezing hands between his hair and messing them up in a fit of anger – then he moved around the car and got inside, starting the engine in the same moment as the bell from the shop's entrance rang, a tall man coming out of it.

As Taiga entered the road again, Aomine's shoulders finally relaxed – it was subtle, the smallest of sighs and just the slightest hint of a change in his position, but the redhead picked it up anyway.

The fact that he decided not to ask, though, was something even he himself couldn't really explain.

\----

In the few days Kagami had spent with Aomine, some things about the other had piked his curiosity more than once – there were moments, mostly when he felt too exhausted to properly connect his mind, heart and mouth, when he had nearly found himself uttering one of the far too numerous questions he had piled up in his mind.

It was only because he really, _really_ wasn't ready to answer question of his own that he still hadn't opened his mouth – but he wanted to, he wanted to ask, even if he wasn't sure about _why_ he was so interested in the other man.

Anyway, some things Aomine did would have made anyone curious, of this Kagami was sure.

For example, there were moments in which the blue haired man would just curl on himself and look outside the window, eyes far away and lips down-turned in an unhappy scowl, and he wouldn't answer whatever Taiga said – it was like he closed in a world of his own, and for some reason the redhead really wanted to know what he was thinking about, in those moments.

Another thing Kagami had picked up pretty quickly was how Aomine wouldn't say his own name  _ever_ if he could avoid it – and it wasn't just about his first name, but his surname as well. 

One or two times already Taiga had found himself being looked at with narrow eyes and an angry turn of the lips for having called out to him in crowded places and, in those occasions, the blue haired man had ended up spending at least ten minutes continuously checking his surroundings to be sure nobody had hear – and, in all honesty, Kagami didn't  _exactly_ like that specific behavior, but something in his guts told him to just let it pass, to ignore it.

Other times – and Taiga had spent a lot of time trying to convince himself he didn't know why this was the one quirk that  _really_ got on his nerves – Aomine would lose himself while looking at some specific women, usually pretty cute ones, long hair and nice smiles, and his eyes would turn distant, as if set faraway in time. 

There was also how he would flinch if touched too vehemently on his left side, how he'd always pay cash, how he didn't have a phone (and, honestly,  _who doesn't have a phone, these days?_ ) - Kagami had questions about all those things and probably many, many more, questions he would probably never voice anyway, questions that would keep on piling up inside his mind maybe forever.

Adding to the ever-growing list of things he would never ask _why were you running away from an over six feet tall man_ didn't bother him all that much, everything considered.

\----

Anyway, going against every and each of his predictions, Kagami found out something about what was going on back at the gas station four days later – and it happened in the same moment he finally gave in to the desire he had felt since the start to take a picture of the other man.

It was late at night, with snow slowly piling up outside the room they had rented – after two whole days of nearly freezing to death from spending their nights in the car and the tan man's incessant complaining about how Kagami was trying to kill him, both of them had decided that a hot shower and warm covers couldn't be _that much_ of a bad idea.

(The redhead hadn't wanted to, at first, concerned about how much money he still had to spend, how much longer he was planning his trip to be, but Aomine had decided to pay for both of them – _I told you that cash's not a problem_ and _I prefer broke to frozen to death_ – so, in the end, he had let the other search for the warmest-looking motel he could find without much complaining.)

(It wasn't like he didn't miss the comfort of a bed, after all.)

In that specific moment, Taiga had been sitting on one of the two single beds, eyes set on the landscape visible through the window on the opposing wall and camera in his hands; he was letting his fingers brush over the buttons, his palms starting to regain the confidence in handling the object he had been sure he had already lost, but the strength to actually press the shutter still wasn't there, still couldn't come back – it was lost in how his mind couldn't forget, buried under the memories tied to the last time he had used it, images that flooded his vision every time he looked through the lens.

(The memories of ten months and three days and twenty hours prior, and he still couldn't forget, still couldn't move on.)

He heard Aomine coming out of the bathroom the moment the door opened, just a couple of feet away from him, but he didn't move his attention on the man until the other's deep voice reached his ears, complaining about the weather, wondering about where he could have left his sweater.

“Why does it have to be so damn cold anyway, what the hell,” he mumbled to himself in annoyance, and Kagami snorted, rolling his eyes at his roommate's anger.

He turned around to answer, something on the lines of _you sure are stupid if you didn't think you'd freeze without a shirt on right now_ , probably, but the words died on his lips the moment his eyes fell on the other's turned around figure – for the first time since they had started traveling together, the man's upper body wasn't covered by a shirt, leaving perfectly visible the blue hair still dripping water on the strong neck, jeans resting low on the tanned, slender hips, and the biggest, most colorful tattoo Kagami had ever seen taking over Aomine's whole back, disappearing under the pants' waistband, curling over both shoulders and dipping on the man's upper-arms.

It was an enchanting image, and Taiga stared at it for a few seconds with eyes wide and mouth semi-open.

“A panther,” he mumbled without realizing, sounds coming out of his lips in hushed awe, hands itching to run his fingertips over the defined lines and shapes – as the word resounded through the still air of the room, the other's muscles tensed, making him freeze for a second, and then the thick fabric of a green sweater covered the picture in one swift, elegant move.

Taiga found himself frowning at the loss before he could stop himself.

“You like it?” Aomine asked turning around, cocky tone somehow sounding a little too forced in the redhead's ears, maybe even alarmed – the tan arms crossed over the wide chest while he shifted all his weight on his right leg, and Kagami turned his camera in his hands a couple of times before nodding, slow.

“Yeah, I do,” he said, as firmly as he could, and at the admission the other's lids widened, surprised.

He let himself fall to sit on his own bed, Aomine, not saying a word, keeping his eyes on Taiga; the swelling that had been taking over the left side of his face had significantly decreased during the last week, leaving only a vaguely more yellow zone under the lower lid and above the eyebrow – looking at the man like this, Kagami was struck once more by just how good looking he could actually be.

It was weirdly fascinating, somehow, and also really annoying.

It took around two minutes – two minutes of staring and silence, seconds over seconds of something the two men had started to find familiar for how many times they'd already found themselves in the same situation since they had first met.

It took two minutes for the stiffness in Aomine's frame to completely disappear, and then a soft snort left the tan man, a grin bending his lips and shoulders shaking in silent laughter for a single, fleeting moment – it dissipated the vague awkwardness Kagami had been starting to sense in the air, and the redhead felt grateful for it, finding himself relax in answer.

“Of course,” Aomine then said, amusement tinting his tone, “right, yeah, of course. You _would_ like it, wouldn't you.”

Taiga raised a brow at that statement, setting then his features in a scowl when the words _it_ is _you after all_ left the other's lips in a barely audible mumble.

“What's that supposed to mean?” he asked, annoyed, and the blue haired man rolled his eyes at him in answer, shifting to get more comfortable on the mattress.

“That you're just stupid enough, that's what it means, _idiot_ ,” he said, having Kagami tighten his hands around the camera still resting between his fingers and harden his expression, draw in his brows, curl his lips.

“What the fuck, there's nothing stupid with liking it, dumbass,” he retorted, prompting Aomine to snort again, this time more incredulous that actually amused.

“Are you really that much of a moron? People don't usually like this kinda stuff, you know?” he said, tone between annoyed and disbelieving, and the redhead scoffed at him, rolled his eyes.

“Why wouldn't I like it? It's nice so I like it, you really are an idiot if you can't understand such a simple thing,” he countered, letting his expression harden even further – the other's eyes widened a little at the sentence, as he opened his mouth in an annoyed inhale.

“You mean that you really don't know what–!” Aomine started, voice slightly closer to angry than before – he stopped in the middle of the sentence, though, narrowing his eyes, setting his lips in a tight line.

“Whatever,” he completed in the end, letting himself fall back on the mattress and shutting his eyes, “it's just a drawing anyway.”

Kagami looked at him for a couple of minutes – looked at his still tense frame, at his balled up fists, at his furrowed eyebrows.

And, as he looked at him, taking in how _wrong_ that stiffness felt when it engulfed the blue haired man, he thought about those last words, about what he had been about to say, how the sentence was meant to end.

He thought about the bright colors of the tattoo covering the other's whole back, about the black eye just starting to fade out into Aomine's normal skin tone – about the money the man seemed to have no problems with in the least, about the conbini four days before and the hurried way in which the man had had him practically run away.

He furrowed his brows, narrowed his lids until his eyes looked like the smallest slits. Then he forced his shoulders to relax, exhaled slowly, and let himself fall back on the bed, mirroring the other.

“I know what it means,” he said, low voice clearly audible in the silence of the room – a silence broken only by the humming of the air conditioning and the hitch in Aomine's breath as the redhead's words registered in his mind.

“I mean, I know what it _may_ mean,” he corrected himself, “what it sometimes means, anyway.”

Then took a deep breath in and closed his eyes, rhythmically moving his thumbs along the sides of his camera, over the small screen, around the familiar buttons and shapes, to calm himself, to find the strength to finish what he had started to say.

“Are you saying it's true? You're a yakuza?” he asked, tone tight and lids still closed, and Aomine, for a while, didn't answer.

For long seconds, Taiga was practically sure the other man had stopped breathing by how still the air between them had started to feel, how the silence nearly made his ears ring.

It was like the whole world had suddenly come to a halt.

“If I said I am, would you be scared?” the deep tone of the other said in the end, voice just above a whisper, nothing more than the smallest mumble; it felt like a forced sound, like the man hadn't actually wanted to utter those words, like he didn't really want to hear the answer he had just asked for.

Kagami felt his body tense at the other's insecure tone, shoulders stiffening, hands stilling – then his eyebrows furrowed, as something very similar to annoyance filled him from chest to mind.

“Of you?” he snorted, “who would be scared of _you_?”

Aside from every rational thought Taiga's mind was yelling at him _(even if he's taller you're bigger than him_ , _you're probably stronger_ , _you had to deal with far more dangerous stuff_ ), the reason why he couldn't even begin to be scared of the blue haired man was a feeling starting in the pit of his stomach, spreading all over inside his ribcage, getting stuck in the back of his throat.

It felt comfortable, having Aomine around. His presence felt _right_.

He had already clear that he didn't want to part from him, not now at least – his past, what he was or could ever be, it wasn't enough to make him change his mind.

(And Taiga didn't want to think about it, about the clear skin on his chest, about the words his mother had told him so long ago, about the other's name he still didn't know, didn't want to know.)

(Even if everything felt so right.)

(So right, it scared him more than anything ever could.)

This time, Aomine didn't answer.

Kagami waited for a while, listening to his breathing, thinking over everything that had just happened. Then he sighed, slow and deep, and sat up.

“Can I take a pic of it?”

\----

“You really like it that much?” asked Aomine, voice tinted with genuine surprise, and Kagami, behind him, just shrugged in answer, mumbling a distracted _it's cool, you know_.

They were sitting on the blue haired man's bed, green sweater once again off, leaving the wide back uncovered; Taiga had his camera hanging from his neck, right hand holding it as the other hovered only inches away from Aomine's skin.

His eyes were focused on the inc covering it whole, tracing with his scarlet irises every line and every color – sliding from the tail curling at the base of the tan neck, down to the back paws sinking their claws in the man's body, continuing through the slim, curled over body of the black animal resting between so much vividly colored flora Kagami had felt nearly overwhelmed looking at it, at first.

“This room's lighting is shit,” he mumbled, raising his left hand and to rest on Aomine's arm, moving him to a better position, and the other snorted under his breath, amused.

“So you really are a photographer, uh,” he said, turning around a bit just to have Kagami stop him and grumble at him to stay put, not to move.

“What, you didn't believe me?” the redhead questioned, moving the camera in front of his face and looking at the other's back through the lens – it was a weird feeling, having the object once again between his hands with the intention of actually using it after such a long time.

(It felt nostalgic, and also weirdly right, like he finally had once again all his limbs attached to his body – how he could finally look through the viewfinder and see only what was in front of him, how everything his eyes could catch was the man before him right now.)

(It felt like the calm before the storm, like something horrible was about to happen, and Taiga tried his best not to think about anything, to just _s_ _hut his mind already_.)

Aomine hummed, hunching over a little when the redhead's left hand pushed in the middle of his back, letting himself be positioned however the other preferred.

“You don't look much like an artist, to be honest.”

This time, it was Kagami's turn to snort.

“Why, what face do artists have?” he asked, as his index finger pressed on the shutter one, two, three times. He shifted a bit to the side, lowered a little his camera, took a fourth picture, then a fifth.

“Dunno,” Aomine answered, raising a hand to rub at his nose, “not your stupid one though, that's for sure.”

Kagami furrowed his brows behind the lens, opened his mouth to snarl at the man to just shut it – when a still somewhat red, rough-looking patch of skin on the other's left side caught his attention, making his eyes widen and his hand reach out to lightly touch it without thinking.

“That's a pretty ugly scar,” he said, retracting his fingers when he felt the other's muscle stiffen in surprise and maybe dull pain, going by the hitch in his breathing – he let them hover an inch away from it, tracing with his eyes the way the hurt skin interrupted the motif of the tattoo, wondering just _what_ could have caused that still healing wound _._

As he raised his camera to take a picture of it, trying to highlight the contrast between the softness of the azure leaf it cut in half and the violent image of the scarring, Aomine sighed and straightened his back, turning around to face Kagami.

A small smirk was bending his lips, showing a hint of teeth, and Taiga raised a brow at that expression he didn't really understand.

“What?” he asked, pulling back the slightest bit on instincts – the blue haired man curved a little on himself, resting his chin on one hand and looking at Kagami from below, grin still stretching the corners of his mouth.

“You know what,” he started, somewhat sly tone covering his voice, “I'll tell you what it's from, if you tell me how you got those three slashes on your side.”

Those were close to the last words Taiga had been expecting to hear, and that feeling soon showed on his face: his eyes widened, his eyebrows rose, and he couldn't stop himself from leaning even further away from the man in front of him.

“What?” he repeated, tone now less suspecting, more unsure, and Aomine rolled his eyes at him.

“You know about my, you know, _thing_ ,” he said, “it's just right if you tell me something about you.”

The only thing Kagami could do, for a while, was stare at him – wide eyes and slack jaw.

What the tanned man was saying was indeed kind of true, he told himself, and probably fair he had to admit, but thinking about those scars wasn't exactly Taiga's favorite pastime.

(Thinking about ten months ago was always too hard for him, even if those events were always on his mind anyway, even if he barely ever lived half a minute of his life without those images flooding his head and tainting his vision.)

“I don't want the whole story,” Aomine added then, straightening once again his back and keeping his steady, midnight eyes pointed in Kagami's unsure, scarlet ones, “only what caused them.”

The redhead looked at him for a minute longer, weighing in his mind the possibility of refusing, what he would get from it, how much he'd destroy any future chance of knowing something more about the other man – which was, weirdly enough, something he really, _really_ wanted, after all – then he sighed, letting his shoulders slump forward and closing his eyes.

“You wouldn't believe me anyway,” he tried, hoping even he didn't know in what reaction, but Aomine only rolled his eyes, scoffing a sure _try me_.

The redhead kept his eyes on him for a handful of seconds more, then sighed again.

“It was a bear,” he said, a defeated admission leaving his lips in a soft tone.

The silence that engulfed them after Kagami's statement lasted about five minutes – five minutes of the AC humming incessantly in Taiga's ears, of the wind howling outside the window, of tensely waiting for a reaction of any kind with shoulders set and hands closed tight.

Then Aomine snorted, a snort in which the redhead had learned to read the rolling of his eyes, the raising of his brows.

“Yeah, sure, and you expect me to believe that,” he sneered, skepticism dripping from his tone. Kagami didn't move, though, nor did he answer in any way – he waited for the other's suppressed laugh to die out, and then some more, not really sure what else to say.

He _had_ said he wouldn't believe him, after all.

“You... are serious?” Aomine asked in the end, seconds over tense seconds later, and a heavy sigh left Taiga's chest, having him close on himself even more.

“I'm a wildlife photographer,” he explained, opening his eyes and setting them on the space above the blue haired man's right shoulder, gazing at nothing, trying to keep the memories away.

“ _Ugh,_ no, wait,” he kept going, raising a hand to move fingers between his hair, messing them up, sighing again, “I _was_ a wildlife photographer, I– something went wrong, when I got these scars.”

Aomine raised a thin eyebrow at him, crossed his arms over his still necked chest.

“Yeah, I could have guessed,” he said, prompting Kagami to shoot him a glare and click his tongue, annoyed.

“ _Anyway_ , it was a bear. Honest. Now's your turn,” he concluded, subconsciously raising a hand to hold onto his right side, feeling the rough paths drawn by the slashes on his skin through his shirt and hoodie.

The other man looked at him for nearly a whole minute, eyes narrow and head tilted to the side – then he shrugged, getting a bit straighter and reaching for the green sweater beside him.

“I'm not gonna tell how I got it since you didn't,” he pointed out, sliding the cloth over his head.

(Taiga's eyes landed on the tan skin of his chest, on the still clear patch just under the left clavicle, his irises staying put on that area until the green fabric covered it.)

(That sight had his heart swell a little, a feeling as much close to relief as it was to anxiety, and Kagami forced his eyes back on the other's face, made his mind stop thinking.)

The redhead nodded, letting the camera still hanging from his neck fall against his chest, crossing his arms around his middle – Aomine sighed, rubbing an open palm over the scar from above the sweater, wriggling his nose.

“A bullet,” he said, short, and Kagami found himself raising a brow at him.

“That's it?” he asked, unimpressed – the other man rolled his eyes at him, scoffing as Taiga added a vaguely annoyed _I could have guessed that much by myself, thank you._

“Sorry if not everyone goes around fighting bears,” he sneered, pushing the redhead off his mattress with one hand and then getting under the covers – Kagami didn't point out that it _wasn't_ a fight, nor did he bother to answer in any other way.

He covered the few steps to his bed, turning the lights off as he went, and then set on it with the duvets and comforters around and over him, looking at the photos he had just taken from the small screen of his camera.

\----

“Let's turn to the left,” said Aomine three days later, pointing a finger at a sign about ten feet in front of them.

“What? No,” was Kagami's answer, short, a little bit indignant, shooting a narrow eyed look at the other and then turning back towards the road – the tanned man, at his side, scoffed and rolled his eyes, pushing himself up to sit straighter and turning towards him.

“Why not? There's nothing else we have to do anyway,” he reasoned, grinning a little bit, “I know you're not in a hurry, we've been going around through small cities and side roads for days now.”

“That's because of the shitty weather,” Taiga tried to counter, biting his own lips, “there are lots of roads I can't take.”

Aomine's answer was a small, incredulous snort, though, as he rested the side of his head on the back of his seat and pointed his still grinning eyes more steadily on the other's face.

“That doesn't change we could have been up in Russia in two days top, but we're still here,” he pointed out, “Come _oooon_ , Kagami! It says there's a festival going on there, let's go see!”

It was probably the excited smile on the other's face, the redhead told himself. That, and the fact that they _really_ didn't have a schedule to follow – that was most probably the reason why Kagami found himself sighing and giving in without putting up much of a fight at all.

“Alright. Whatever, okay, let's go,” he grumbled, turning where Aomine had been pointing – the way the grin on the tanned face turned into a full out smile, how he lowered his face to hide behind the white scarf, how his brows relaxed and his expression softened, those were proof enough, for Kagami, that the decision couldn't be the worst he had ever made.

It had been only ten days and he was already starting to get weak to the image of a happy Aomine – only thinking about it annoyed him to no end, if he had to be honest.

(It also worried him, and scared too – sometimes he found himself entertaining the idea of leaving the other behind, just to get rid of those unwelcome feelings that threatened to eat him alive.)

(He could never bring himself to, of course. The prospect of being without the other was starting to feel a lot like Hell, in his mind.)

(That was another thing that scared him – scared him more than he cared to admit, brought back memories he didn't want to deal with.)

They had to leave the car on the outskirts of the town holding the festival – every road was closed because of it, and Kagami made sure to complain about having to walk in the middle of the falling snow as much as possible.

_You can't even see it from how light it is_ , Aomine had countered, and Taiga had scoffed and pouted, wrapping his arms around his own middle to warm himself up at least a bit.

“I'm just saying, you complain too much about the cold to be the one forcing me to walk around in it,” he said, not really as annoyed as he made himself sound, and the other man snorted and got a bit closer to him, pushing him with his shoulder, keeping the distance little enough for their arms to brush against each other every now and then.

“We've been in that car for ten days straight, walking around won't hurt you,” he pointed out – Kagami was too taken by how _warm_ the other's closeness was making him feel to protest in any way, though.

He moved a couple of steps back, instead, pulling his camera out of one of his coat's pockets and looking at Aomine through the viewfinder; the man widened his eyes for a second at the action, letting then a grin stretch his lips and raising his gloved right hand in a victory sign – he was starting to get used to Taiga's pictures, the redhead could see it in the significantly more relaxed way he posed in front of his lens.

Kagami pressed the shutter and then checked how the photo had turned out, as the other moved once again closer to him, head tilted upwards and snowflakes disappearing on his reddening, cold cheeks – at the image, the redhead raised his camera again, snapped another photo of the weirdly peaceful man, and then one more of the surprised expression that took over Aomine's face as he realized he was being used as a subject again.

“You take lots of pictures of me,” he said, as Kagami let the camera slip back into his pocket and fell in step with him, “am I that good looking?”

There was a smirk on his face, and sneer in his voice, but Taiga couldn't bring himself to start bickering with him, right then. Mostly, because he wasn't really sure about how to answer to the insinuation.

Of course Aomine wasn't ugly, it would have been stupid even just trying to affirm such a thing. Only, the reason why Kagami kept snapping picture after picture of the man wasn't his face  _in itself_ , or his appearance as a whole – it was a feeling the redhead had no idea how to explain to the other without sounding incredibly stupid, though.

It was in how calm Aomine's figure made him feel – how, sometimes, looking at him made everything aside from the present disappear, how it stopped the time in Taiga's head.

(That incessant ticktocking that had been beating in the back of his head for ten months, seven days, eleven hours and forty-one minutes, that counting down to the future he had been doing without being able to stop, Aomine made it halt with so much ease, it was nearly infuriating.)

He snapped the pictures to remember that the past was over, that tomorrow still hadn't come, and it didn't work with anything but the blue haired, tan skinned man – landscapes and other people just didn't do the trick, animals only worsened his state of mind.

How was he supposed to explain all of that without sounding like an idiot, though, he didn't know.

“Your face looks so stupid it makes me want to keep a picture as possible blackmail material, sometimes,” he said instead, shrugging, having his shoulder hit the other's with the motion, and Aomine's eyebrows drew in the middle as he started to loudly complain and grumble.

It was fine like that, without him knowing: Kagami really didn't want to think about the way the other made him feel, anyway.

\----

The blue haired man had just won everything a shooting-game booth had to offer – and then, for the joy of the nearly-in-tears-man behind the counter, decided that he didn't need anything aside from a small basketball key-chain and returned everything else – when the first firework exploded, lighting up the dark sky with green and yellow sparkles.

“Let's get somewhere higher,” he said, eyes alight as he turned around towards the redhead, and Taiga stopped his hand from lowering the camera from before his eyes, snapped another picture of the man in front of him.

“Alright,” he answered, grin wide on his face – it had been too long since last time he had felt so light, so unconcerned about anything at all, and he was forcing himself not to think about what it may mean, trying to just enjoy the feeling as long as it lasted.

The snow was still lightly falling over them as they made their way through the crowd, small flakes washed away by the now stronger wind, and Kagami huddled tighter inside his coat and scarf, subconsciously moved closer to Aomine to get even just a little bit warmer.

“Does being that good with a gun come from your, you know, _occupation_?” Taiga asked after a bit, tone casual and left arm still resting against the other – the words made the blue haired man's frame tense for a second, his eyes widen the slightest bit, and then a snort left his chest, shoulders shaking in silent laughter.

“You sure are casual about the whole thing,” he said, as they finally made their way out of the crowd and moved into a more open, emptier road.

Kagami, at his side, shrugged and sank his face further down into his scarf, rubbing the tip of his freezing nose into the warm material – he didn't answer, still unsure about how to explain to the other that his presence made him feel too _at home_ for his past to scare him, and waited instead for the man to continue talking.

“Nah, not really,” Aomine answered in the end, raising his face towards the sky, “I mean, I was already good at taking aim before learning how to use a gun. Good hand-eye coordination or something,” he shrugged, and Taiga hummed a low _uhhhhh_ in understanding.

They stopped close to a handrail on the side of a nearly empty road, leaning against it side to side, as the fireworks still exploded in the sky – pinks and oranges and purples and yellows, lighting up the snow-covered asphalt and playing nicely on Aomine's profile, making his transfixed eyes shine, his skin look as if it were glowing, and Kagami reached for the camera and snapped a picture without really meaning to.

There was a small smile curving the other man's lips, his gaze set on the colors dancing above them, white flakes dusting his hair and shoulders – his expression was soft, close to peaceful, maybe, and Taiga found himself comparing him once again to a little kid in a too big body.

He wanted to hold him, he realized out of the blue.

Reach out his arms and embrace him, fit the built body against his own, hide his still cold nose in the crook of the man's neck. Feel his heat as if he were one with it, have his scent fill his nostrils, slide his lips across his skin.

He wanted to kiss him.

_Fuck_ , was the only thing running through his thoughts, as his right hand moved on its own to reach out to the other, as he pushed his body a little bit closer, his mind too frozen in time for him to do anything to stop it – the strength not being there and, if he had to be completely honest with himself, the will neither.

Feeling him shift at his side, Aomine turned around towards him – mouth semi-open in the beginning of a sentence, breath stopping as he took in the closeness of the other. Kagami could see the way his lids widened, the fireworks' light making his eyes shine in warm colors, highlighting his cheekbones and parted lips, and Taiga wanted to know more than anything else what they tasted like, in that moment.

He imagined holding the other's face with his open palms, pressing his mouth over Aomine's own, sliding his tongue inside it, against the other's – pushing his fingers between the short, blue locks, holding him tight against himself, feeling the other's hands on his back and shoulders. He could feel electricity, running in the air between them, as if something deep and incomprehensible was pushing them towards one another, as if they were meant to be as close as possible, always.

Then a new firework lit up the world, noise filling Taiga's ears, red light tinting Aomine's skin and hair and eyes, and Kagami found himself widening his lids, taking a step back, his right hand still midair, halfway to touch the other man.

(It was the red, that had him snap out of it – so much red, covering every visible patch of the tan skin, having Taiga's mind jerk back to ten months prior, his head finally ringing those alarm bells he had been forcing mute for the whole night against his better judgment.)

“Uh,” he forced out, shifting his eyes from Aomine's widening lids to his own raised hand and then back again, “you, uhm, have snow on your hair,” he completed, reaching out to brush the flakes off the blue locks in hurried, nervous motions.

The other man kept his wide eyes on him for a couple of seconds, surprise covering his whole face, as Kagami took another step back, turned his eyes away from his figure – he couldn't make himself look at him, at the disappointment he could see hidden between his features, and let his mind yell at him for stopping, realize just how much he hadn't wanted to.

“Kagami...” Aomine whispered, as the fireworks died out in the sky, leaving them once again immersed in the dark night lit up only by the cold, impersonal streetlamp lights.

Taiga took in a breath, deep and slow, still forcing himself not to look at the other. Then he slid his hands in his pockets, the right's fingers curling around his camera, and started moving back towards the center of the city.

“Let's try and find a place to stay the night,” he said, trying to sound casual, but by the hitch in the other's breath it was obvious just how forced and strained his voice had actually left his mouth as.

“Kagami,”Aomine repeated then, reaching out to hold onto his coat's left sleeve, and the redhead found himself holding his breath, unable to exhale for far too long seconds, waiting for the other to keep talking.

“What,” he said in the end, when it started to look like the tanned man didn't have any intention to continue what he had started to say – the word left his lips in a barely audible, too-close-to-scared murmur, and Aomine moved a step closer to him, inhaled sharply for a short moment.

“Tell me your name,” he whispered, just inches away from the redhead's left ear, and Kagami's world, for a second that felt like the most agonizing eternity, completely stopped.

“No,” he answered, as strongly as his panicked mind let him, jerking his arm away from the other's hold and starting to move again – he felt Aomine follow him not even a whole ten seconds later, hurried steps to cover the distance the redhead had put between them.

“Kagami,” he said once more, now a bit closer to pleading, and Taiga's muscles stiffened, his lids closed tight.

“ _No_ ,” he repeated, stronger now, steadier, “and I don't want to hear yours either,” he specified, stopping and turning around to point his scarlet irises in the midnight ones.

“Please just– let's just find somewhere to sleep.”

His mind, his heart, his whole body – everything was yelling at Kagami that he was being stupid, irrational. That he  _needed_ to hear that name, know what would happen if he told his to the other – he  _wanted_ to, like he hadn't wanted anything in a long time, a feeling as strong as everything Aomine had had him feel since the first time they had met.

It was like the universe itself was screaming at Taiga to give in, to just let this happen, and it made him so  _scared_ .

(It threw him back to ten months before that moment, to the blood on his hands and his side, to the hole opening inside his heart.)

(To that cold, unwelcoming room, to the body resting on the floor, to the two names written on that one stone he had been doing  _everything_ to never think about ever again.)

“ _Please_ ,” he whispered once more, dragging his eyes away from Aomine, trying not to notice how the tanned hands closed spasmodically at his sides, how his shoulders were held tight, his back too stiff-looking.

“Alright,” came then the answer, a slightly strangled, unhappy word – a sound Taiga found himself both grateful and devastated, to hear.

“Okay, let's find a place,” Aomine completed, moving around the redhead and preceding him on the deserted road, and Kagami nodded, exhaled, and silently followed him.

\----

His hand held onto the camera inside his pocket for the whole hour they took to find a room, and if he spent that night looking at the pictures he had taken of the other man, one hand held above his heart – nails digging into the clear space it rested under – and deep uncertainty filling his mind and gripping at his throat and stomach, he tried not to think about what that behavior may have meant all that much.

He couldn't let himself give in anyway, he kept on repeating like a mantra at every dip his heart took because of the man in the photographs.

(Because of his natural expressions and mannerisms, his smiles and frowns, the way the light always hit him in just the right way, his colors so vibrant, so inviting.)

He _couldn't_ let himself go.

Even if holding back was starting to look far more painful than any outcome his giving in could ever possibly bring on them.

\----

The tense air and awkward feeling lasted a whole day and a half – strained silences filling their time and too much space forcibly put between them, hands itching to reach out and so many sentences dying on their lips with the first, unspoken word.

Kagami couldn't bring himself to look the other in the eyes, Aomine didn't smile nor tried bickering with him; it was the most stressful period of time the redhead had had to endure since he had first met the other, and it felt wrong in every possible way, set uncomfortably over his head, inside his heart – like a hand gripping at his throat and stomach, and he wanted to do something, say _anything_ to make it all go back to the day before, but he wasn't ready.

He wasn't ready to get over what had happened ten months in his past, and he wasn't sure he'd ever be.

It was one day and a half of tension, then the still, too heavy air of the car became too much for Kagami to endure.

He stopped close to a bridge, necked trees all around it and snow piled up on the ground, and got out of the vehicle that had pretty much become his home, in the last half a month.

“I need fresh air,” he said to the other, closing the door with a slow movement and making his way towards the wooden handrail, setting his eyes on the frozen water under it.

Aomine followed him around two minutes later, sound of the long, lazy strides softened by the white coat covering the road and breath condensing in the too cold air – he stopped on the other side of the bridge, five or six feet from the redhead, and Kagami forced himself not to turn around and look, tried to find _any way_ to lighten the mood between them, find something to say.

During the last thirty-two hours, Taiga had gone over the events of the end of the festival as many times as he could; he had rethought about what he had felt, how the other had reacted, about the question Aomine had asked – he had questioned his own reactions, and the reasons he had used to convince himself he was doing the right thing, and all the while his attention couldn't help but be drawn to the other, his eyes always on him, his ears straining to catch every sound the man made.

He had to forcibly stop his body from pushing closer to the man, from holding him, kissing him, repeating his name again and again and again and _again_.

He sighed, hiding his face between his hands, and wondered if keeping away from the other could ever be the right thing to do, since it made him feel so much like hell. Since his body craved the contact so much, since his mind couldn't stop thinking about him at all, he wondered how could staying away benefit his sanity in any real way.

It was Aomine's voice that pulled him out of his thoughts, in the end.

“Oh, hey there, what are you doing here all alone?” he said, tone light and somehow happy, and Kagami raised a brow and made to turn around to ask the other who was he talking to, when a bark made his back stiffen, his shoulders tense.

His eyes widened, his hands closed spasmodically around the handrail before him, and he forced himself to breath in and breath out, turn around to check what was actually happening – maybe he had heard wrong, maybe he was just imagining things, he told himself.

“You have a collar, so your owner has to be somewhere around here, right?” Aomine was saying as Taiga's scarlet, wide irises finally set on the scene going on behind him – the blue haired man was crouching on the ground, eye-level with a too big, too overexcited-looking golden retriever, and the breath caught in Kagami's throat, his feet trying to push him even further against the handrail without much success.

“ _Shit_ ,” he whispered, a strangled sound he didn't even realize had left his lips until it caught the dog's attention – as the brown eyes set on him, the redhead felt his heart stop, the color drain from his face.

“Kagami?” Aomine asked, tone unsure and one eyebrow raised, still not getting to his feet, “what's wrong?”

Taiga opened his mouth to answer, tell the other that he was _completely fine, thank you_ , when the dog barked and took a step towards him – his hands tightened around the handrail so much they started to hurt, and he inhaled sharply, keeping his eyes fixed on the animal, pushing himself even further into the railing.

“Shit,” he repeated under his breath, as the _beast_ looked at him with wide, attentive eyes, tongue out and fangs visible,“fuck, shit, fuck, go _ddammit_ ,” he continued, feeling his heart beat too fast, his lungs too small for the air he needed.

“Dude, are you okay?” the other man asked again, getting to his feet and moving towards the redhead, and the dog turned his attention on him, following his steps as he got closer – Kagami felt his heart jump in his throat and completely stop there.

“Don't–! Stay away, don't get it closer, _fuck!_ ” he half-yelled, pleading tone taking over his voice, and Aomine stopped in his tracks and raised his eyebrows, moving his widening eyes on the retriever at his side.

“You mean the dog?” he asked, confused, and Kagami growled low in his throat, distressed – the sound caught once again the animal's attention, making Taiga freeze on the spot.

“Are you kidding me, you're afraid of dogs?” Aomine asked, incredulity dripping from his voice, and the redhead would have gotten angry at him, hadn't he been completely unable to do anything but stare at the animal and hope for it to just disappear already.

“Aomine, _come on_ ,” he pleaded, voice just a whisper, so close to a whimper he nearly felt ashamed of himself – but it made the other snap out of his astonishment, grab the collar of the dog and drag it back to the other side of the bridge, making Kagami's breath get back to a steadier rhythm, even if his whole body still couldn't lose the overall stiffness.

“I can't believe this, you got into a fight with a bear and are scared of _dogs_ ,” said the other man then, incredulity and amazement still lingering in his tone, and Taiga scowled at him without moving his eyes from the dog, furrowed his brows, hardened his stare.

“It _wasn't_ a fight, and it's fucking irrational, alright? I can't decide what I'm scared of!” he complained, trying not to rise his tone too much in fear of agitating the animal in front of him.

Aomine kept his gaze on him a bit longer, left hand still holding the dog, head slightly tilted to the side, then he sighed and got back on his feet.

“I'm taking it away,” he said, nearly invisible smile curving his lips as a panicked expression took over Kagami's face, “you wait here, alright? I'll be right back.”

As he moved away, dog willingly following him, Taiga felt his body finally relax, his legs giving in under him and having him fall on the snow-covered ground.

He sighed, letting his head hit the railing behind him and closing his eyes, taking in slow and steady breaths to calm his still hammering heart – he stayed like that for what felt like half an hour, wind biting at his cheeks and ears straining to catch any sound of more stray dogs deciding to pay him a visit.

He knew it wasn't normal, being a wildlife photographer, having had to deal with dangerous beasts all over the world, and then freezing in fear at the sight of dogs, of all animals; he couldn't control it, though, in the same way one can't control flinching away after touching too hot water.

Aomine, after coming back, watched him sitting on the ground for a handful of seconds, then crouched down next to him – Kagami had heard him the moment his feet were once more on the bridge, could recognize the cadence of his steps, somehow, but he didn't open his eyes to look at him until the man spoke.

“That was unexpected,” he said, still amused, and Taiga snorted at him, raised his lids to take in the half-grin still lingering on his lips, “I didn't think you'd be this afraid of anything, to be honest.”

“Why not?” the redhead asked, keeping his scarlet irises on the other man for the first time in over a day – he was so close, Aomine, and Kagami found himself having problems breathing once more for a completely different, weirdly more welcome reason.

“Dunno,” the tanned man shrugged, shifting to sit more comfortably on his heels, “you're unimpressed by yakuzas, had a fight with a bear–”

“ _Don't_ – please don't joke about it,” Taiga interrupted, tiredness clear in his voice, and Aomine stopped for a second, watched him attentively, and then nodded.

“Yeah, alright,” he said, moving to sit on the ground by the redhead's side, and Kagami sighed, tried not to think about the closeness of their bodies, their arms brushing against each other.

The silence between them protracted for nearly a whole minute – it was a relaxed silence, though, one Taiga had been craving for over thirty hours, and he basked in it for a while, breathing steadily, feeling Aomine do the same by his side.

“I got better at dealing with them, with time,” he said then, turning around to look at the other, and received a raised brow and tilted head in answer.

“You kidding? It was worse than this?” the blue haired man asked, once again incredulous, and Kagami snorted and nodded, pushing his hands into his pockets to try and warm them.

“I would freeze up completely, as a teen – couldn't talk, couldn't move, could barely breath,” he explained, frowning at the memories, “it was really annoying.”

Aomine looked at him for a few seconds more, then a long, understanding _uhhhh_ left his lips, as he rested his head on the crossed arms on his knees, keeping his blue eyes set on Taiga.

“That had to be a pain,” he said, rubbing the tip of his nose on the back of his left hand, “a real pain, but kinda cute, I guess.”

Kagami, as his brain registered the words, felt his eyes widen and all the blood in his body rush to his face – he felt so grateful for the cold, having his cheeks and nose be already red enough for him to hope that Aomine couldn't notice just how affected he had been by his comment.

He turned away, hiding the lower half of his face between the folds of his scarf, and mumbled an half-audible _don't make fetishes out of other people's fears_ – that had Aomine sputter indignantly, giving the start to their now usual mindless bantering, and Taiga feigned not to notice just how relieved he was feeling that everything was more or less back to what he had started to consider his normality.

\----

That same night, they got caught up in a snowstorm.

Aomine had been behind the wheel when it had started, small flakes turning fast into far bigger ones – the wind had piked up, making it hard to see anything at all aside from the white of the snow, and Kagami had urged him to stop before they seriously hurt themselves.

The temperature had dropped fast after that, whiteness piling all around them, making the work of the AC nearly useless, and Aomine had spent good fifteen minutes complaining about Taiga's decision to move north – _why couldn't it be south,_ _why do you want to freeze to death so much, this is fucking bullshit I tell you_.

It had been two hours since then, one of which spent giving each other the fault of everything, bickering about everything and nothing at all.

The car's clock signed 2:43 in the morning, the air conditioning was still humming noisily in the background – and anyway being only barely audible over the howling of the still raging wind outside – and they had both moved on the backseat, each of them resting their side against one of the two doors, sharing the only blanket they had in their possession.

Kagami had been staring outside the window, eyes lost between the never ending whiteness, when Aomine's voice had reached him, hushed as if heavy with tiredness.

“You're not sleeping,” he said, making the other turn his head towards him in surprise.

“I thought you were,” he answered, squinting his eyes to make out the taller's figure in the dark, and the blue haired man shrugged slowly, shifting a bit to better hide under the comforter.

“Why aren't you sleeping?” he asked, voice a bit more awake than before, “you barely have since we've started this trip.”

Taiga looked at him for a long time, considering what to answer, how to phrase it – then he shrugged his shoulders and crossed his arms above his chest, trying to warm himself up a bit more.

“I told you, I can't sleep,” he decided to go with, moving his gaze back to the scenery outside the window, “I'll sleep if I'm really exhausted, but usually I can't.”

Aomine kept silent for a while after that, so long that Taiga started to think he had finally fallen asleep – then he shifted, moving close enough to the redhead that their shoulders touched, and inhaled deeply.

“Hey, Kagami,” he started, hushed tone and eyes far away from him, “why are we going north?”

Taiga, at the words, found himself widening his lids and stiffening his frame, turned his head around to properly look at the man.

“What?” he asked, not sure about what else to say, and Aomine sighed, moved his midnight irises back on him.

“Why are we going north?” he repeated, voice steadier, as he shifted a little in place, hid his mouth between the two scarves he was wearing and the blanket pulled over to his nose, “why can't you sleep, why won't you tell me your name – will you answer these questions if I ask them now?” he continued, eyes focused on the redhead, and Kagami held his breath in for a long moment, frozen by the other's questioning.

Then he exhaled, long, exhausted, and let himself sink further down on his seat, under the comforter.

“Why do you want to know?” he whispered, a bit defeated, and he could feel Aomine shrugging by how his arm moved against his own.

“I don't know,” was the answer, as the tanned man let himself slip closer to the redhead, lowered his cheek to rest on his shoulder – the new position had Taiga still for a moment, as the other's heat spread through him in a wave of shivers running along his spine, over the back of his hands, and then he let himself relax, moved to better accommodate that body against his side.

“Sometimes, I feel like I want to know everything about you,” Aomine concluded after a while, voice soft but sure, and Kagami found himself heating up at the declaration, shifting uncomfortably for a moment.

Then he let himself think about that sentence – rolled the words in his head, thought about them and made them his own, and realized that he really didn't have the strength, to feign that he didn't feel exactly the same way most of the times.

Aomine was an enigma he had the resources to solve any moment, a book he could just reach out and read from start to end – he knew the man had been ready to answer any question he could have had for him since the festival two night prior, since the second he had first asked for his name.

He had realized it immediately and deliberately decided to ignore it, had been too scared, still was, really, to accept the hand the other man had been offering – to fully embrace what had been happening between them and do something about it.

But, after all, he really wanted to.

If he let his restraint go, forgot about his fears and doubts for a moment, it was far too clear to him how much he wanted to know, how much he wanted to tell.

He sighed, closing his eyes and inhaling again, exhaling slowly. Then he nodded, turning towards Aomine, fixing him with a steady stare.

“Alright,” he conceded, “I'll answer, if you first tell me why you were asking to be taken away when we first met.”

The blue haired man held his gaze in silence only for a few seconds, lids slightly wider in what Kagami assumed was surprise, and then he nodded, letting himself sink further into the redhead's side.

“Deal,” he said, and Taiga found himself relax and let go a breath he hadn't even noticed he had been keeping in.

\----

“I'm not gonna go too much into details with it,” he started, voice a whisper barely audible between the humming of the AC and the roaring of the wind, and Kagami let himself push a bit further against him to hear him better, to warm himself up more.

“'s fine by me,” he answered, feeling Aomine sink into his side with a sigh, as he pulled the blanket higher to better cover both of them.

“You already know I was part of the yakuza,” he said, wriggling his nose to free it from the cold, rubbing it against the fabric of the comforter, and Taiga nodded slow, keeping his steady eyes on him.

“How did you get involved with it?” he asked then, as an afterthought, because that was a thing he had been wanting to know since the night at the motel, when he had first seen the tattoo on the man's back – Aomine shrugged one shoulder, murmuring swears as the movements had the blanket slide a little down his body.

“My father,” he said simply, pulling the cover back up again, sighing as the warmth engulfed him once more, and the redhead hummed a long _hmmmm_ in understanding.

“That's pretty boring,” he mumbled without thinking, moving his eyes on the window behind the blue haired man and then back on the midnight irises, and Aomine snorted under his breath, lowered his lids and whispered an amused _sorry to disappoint, then_.

They settled in a comfortable silence for nearly a minute, after that, slow breathing and relaxed muscles – as Taiga started to think the other had to be drifting off and made to prompt him to continue with the story, ask him about that first night and how he had found himself on that deserted road, the man resting at his side inhaled deeply, sighed slowly.

“There was this girl,”he said, opening his eyes and setting them on the whiteness outside the car, unfocused, “great body, long hair, real big bag full of papers always with her – she was a student at a local night school.”

Kagami tried to imagine her, cute and appealing, and the image his mind came up with made him think about those women the taller man would stop to look at, sometimes – he found himself realizing they probably reminded him of this one, specific girl, and he wriggled his nose in annoyance without meaning to.

Aomine bit his lower lip, look in his eyes as if he were trying to gather his thoughts in an orderly, clear story, and then sighed.

“She walked everyday through one of our streets, somewhat late at night – she'd wave when she saw me, had a pretty smile,” he continued, distant quality to his voice, and Kagami raised a brow at him, still somewhat annoyed, but vaguely intrigued.

“You liked her?” he asked, and Aomine snorted and shook his head in denial, having the redhead feel the movement through the shoulder he was still resting on.

“Nah– well, not like that. She was just, you know... _nice_ ,” he explained, sighing the last word, “we'd talk a lot, from some point on, and it was nice, she was nice. She didn't know about what I was, but she... she really was nice, she was a good friend.”

Kagami thought about it for a bit – about the blue haired man's eyes set far away in the past, about the tone he had been using, overall fond, somehow nostalgic; he could feel the pang of jealousy in his heart, in the back of his throat, as if it were an actual dagger resting in the middle of his chest, and he tried to crush it as fast as he could, pushed the thought as far away from himself as he was able to.

“What happened to her?” he asked, keeping his voice just above a whisper, and Aomine burrowed further into his side in answer, closed his eyes and furrowed his brows.

“I didn't see her anymore,” he said, bitter tone taking over his words, and he finally raised his head from Kagami's shoulder, moved it to rest against the back of the seat – Taiga missed the heat as soon as it was gone, and he tried to focus on the feeling of the other's arm still resting next to his, connecting them from shoulder to elbow.

Aomine's last sentence hung in the air for over a minute, resounded inside Kagami's mind, weighed down on his shoulders – then the other man sighed under his breath, turned his head around without raising it from the seat, and moved to look directly into the scarlet eyes already pointing on him.

“I still don't know what exactly happened to her – I know she's _alive_ but... anyway, I did find out who's fault her disappearing was,” he said, his tone breaking only for a second, his eyes unblinking – Taiga furrowed his brows at him, set his mouth in a thin line, but held the stare for as long as it took for the other to keep going, for him to sigh, move his gaze once more on the storm outside.

“And taking revenge on a brother isn't without consequences,” he completed, voice an impersonal, detached whisper; Kagami felt it ring in his ears weirdly, as if it were a sentence Aomine had been told by someone else, at some point in time, and he was now repeating word by word, like a mantra or a set rule.

When the redhead asked just how harsh those _consequences_ could be, tone unsure but interested, Aomine only snorted and looked at him again, a small, unhappy smile slightly bending his lips.

“Proportional to the act they have to punish,” he said, short and bitter, and Taiga bit his lower lip, furrowed his eyebrows and made to open his mouth again.

“I haven't killed him, if that's what you're about to ask,” the other man clarified, though, stopping him before even a single syllable could leave his lips, “I wasn't too kind either, anyway.”

Kagami kept his brows furrowed and his eyes narrow, rolled the words in his head a couple of times, tried to imagine just how _far_ Aomine could have gone with his actions – thought about how the other had been needing to run away from the city, how he had asked to be taken as far away as he could get.

He tried to imagine being in the situation the blue haired man had found himself into, wondered what he would have done if he had been in his shoes, and a cold chill run through his body at the realization that maybe, probably, he wouldn't have acted too differently.

They looked at each other for a long moment, night smoothing out every curve and edge of their frames, eyes barely able to pick up the other's figure in the nearly pitch darkness induced by the storm – then Aomine inhaled slowly and exhaled deeply, shifted a bit to completely detach himself from Taiga's body, turned around to properly face him.

“Are you scared of me, now?” he asked, voice somehow even lower than the whisper he had been using till that moment – Kagami kept his eyes on him for a while longer, took in the once again stiff frame, thought about the hesitance laced in the man's tone, and then sighed, reaching out a hand to pull him once more against himself.

“No,” he said, closing his eyes and ignoring the way the other's features reflected his surprise – wide lids, slack jaw, raised eyebrows.

“I still can't see what's there to fear about you.”

\----

The storm was starting to die out when Kagami finally took a deep breath in and began his own story – his tone was unsure, just a mere whisper, but Aomine was warm by his side, and that warmth made his worry subside, even if just a little.

“Ten months ago, one of my best friends died,” he said, eyes unfocused as he tried to keep away from his mind the images that had been plaguing him for nearly a year – the blue haired man stiffened at the words, but didn't otherwise move, letting Taiga decide the pace at which he felt more comfortable talking, not hurrying him in any way, and for that the redhead was grateful.

He inhaled, trying to calm himself down, and then closed his lids, resting the side of his head against the cold glass of the window.

“He was a photographer, and my partner – we'd been working together since I first started, he was...” he shook his head, swallowing to try and ease the tightness he felt in his throat, “he died when I got the scars on my side,” he completed, tone defeated, as the memories flooded back inside his mind, taking over his vision.

It had had to be a fairly easy shoot by all standards, he still remembered how they had joked about the job being pretty much a vacation, for them – it was a clear day, they had worked around there enough to know the place by heart, it _had_ to be easy.

Then something had scared the animal, and the next thing Taiga knew was that he was running, noises at his back barely reaching his ringing ears, and he couldn't see his partner, couldn't even hear him, until that scream had pierced through his very being and–

“Kagami,” Aomine called, reaching out a hand to lace his long fingers with the lighter, colder ones, and the sound made the redhead snap out of his memories, fall back into the present – the other man was looking at him, concern in his features and drawn brows, and Taiga shook his head, mumbled an half audible _right, yeah_ , and tried to find in himself the strength to keep going.

“I can't remember much of back then – I woke up in the local hospital three days later, and...” he stopped again, feeling his heart heavy, biting his lower lip and shutting his eyes to keep himself from breaking down.

(It had been ten months, eight days and god only knew how many hours and minutes and seconds and _why_ _couldn't he just get over it already?_ )

Aomine's fingers held tighter around his, and Taiga found himself holding back with just as much strength, letting the other's warmth and presence support him, making himself breath more slowly, more steadily.

“I lived with another friend at the time,” he kept going, voice heavy and eyes set on the snow outside without actually seeing it, “I had them– him and my partner I mean, I had them meet, and they were–” he inhaled, exhaled, and when the next words left his lips they felt heavy, grieving.

“They were each other's name,” he said, letting his head hit the back of his seat and furrowing his brows, biting his lips – it felt hard, to actually voice this story, as if putting it into words finally made it real, unchangeable, but having Aomine by his side helped a bit, somehow grounded him.

(Aomine had always made him feel like the past was something he had the strength to shoulder, like he could face it and still not forget about the present he was living in.)

(He found himself grateful, for how much steadier that man could make him feel.)

“For them it was just like they always tell you, you know? They were each other's whole universe,” he continued, and the other man nodded by his side, started stroking the back of his hand with slow motions of his thumb, “so when I had to come back home, to see my roommate, I didn't know how– how to tell him, about my partner, about his–” he inhaled, forcing the words out of his mouth before he lost the strength to go on, “I had no idea they'd _already told him_.”

Taiga still relived it every time he closed his eyes, the empty house, the cold air, his weak voice resounding through the stillness that pervaded everything – the lights on in the bathroom, the body resting on the ground, the red covering the tiles and ceramics and too pale skin and clothes – he saw it so vividly, felt like it were the present, and he had to bite his lips and force himself to breath, count to ten and then back, to be able to continue talking.

“Burying two of you best friends the same day, seeing them– having to– _fuck–_ ” he growled, raising both his hands to press the heels over his eyes, as the tightness in his throat got unbearable – Aomine's arms were around him not even a second later, cheek resting against his temple, fingers holding onto the back of his coat.

“I'm sorry,” he said, a whisper so low the redhead wouldn't have been able to catch it hadn't it been mumbled right next to his ear, and Kagami raised his arms to embrace him back without even having to think about it, forced himself to breath steadily, made his mind think only about the other's warmth and closeness until his heart stopped feeling so wrong, so heavy.

\----

It was about half an hour later when Aomine finally opened his mouth again – the air between them had stayed heavy for the whole time spent in silence, the tan body once again resting against Kagami's, arms still held around one another's middles.

“Is this why you can't sleep at night?” he asked, voice low, tone wondering, and Taiga nodded his head without moving his eyes from the roof of the car, letting the other feel the movement in the way his chin brushed against his blue hair.

“And it's also why you won't tell me your name,” the man added then, this time more of a statement than a question – the redhead stiffened, held his arms around him a bit tighter, and then let a sigh leave his lips, defeated.

“Yeah,” he admitted, still not moving his gaze on the other, feeling Aomine hum in the vibration against his own neck – there was no reason for him to deny it, at that point, that he was scared of having his whole world revolve around a single person, that he feared what would happen if he was ever to lose them.

It wasn't worth it, in his head, nor was it in any way fair – the way the universe chose for him who he had to live for, the way it could decide to take it away any moment, the way he was completely powerless to stop it.

Aomine kept silent for a long while after that, his breathing steady, his body relaxed, and Kagami was nearly tempted to check if he had fallen asleep, maybe move him in a more comfortable position, when a deep sigh left him in a whoosh of warm air washing over the cold skin of Taiga's neck.

The redhead raised an eyebrow at the tan man, as he detached himself once more from his side and sat straight, pointed his steady gaze into the scarlet, confused irises.

“Listen,” he started, voice sure, and Kagami's lids widened a bit at how serious he sounded, “I'm not gonna force you into anything, but I want you to hear me out.”

The nod Taiga answered him with was hesitant, unsure regarding what exactly the other wanted to talk about, but Aomine looked like it was everything he needed as a green light to keep talking.

“That way of thinking is _damn idiotic_ ,” he said, furrowing his brows and scowling a little, and Kagami found himself widening his eyes and opening his mouth to yell at him, but the other silenced him with an open palm over his mouth and a seriousness Taiga had never seen on him reflected in his irises.

“Shut up, let me talk,” he continued, a bit annoyed, and Kagami grumbled from behind the tan hand, narrowed his eyes at him – Aomine ignored him, though, went on as if he'd never been interrupted at all.

“You think that just because someone's your name, your _soulmate_ , that means that they're also gonna be the center of your universe – and, hell, maybe you're right, how would I know,” he started, mouth set in a down-turned scowl and tone equal parts annoyance and exasperation, “now I'm gonna tell you what I _do_ know, though, so open up your ears,” he said, finally lowering his palm from the redhead's mouth and staring at him with clear eyes and furrowed brows.

“Name or not, soulmate or not – Kagami, my whole world already revolves around you.”

The words rang in Taiga's ears for a long time, seconds over seconds of those letters and sounds resounding into his head and sinking into his soul, and the redhead felt his face heat up like it wasn't his own, closed his fingers around the blanket's cloth without even realizing.

“What?” he asked, wondering what else he could say, how did Aomine even expect him to react – the man in front of him sighed, raised a hand to mess his hair up and then sighed again, a mumbled _shit, that was fucking cheesy_ leaving his barely parted lips, and maybe his cheeks had become redder as well, but the darkness didn't let Taiga see properly enough to be sure.

“I mean it,” he answered in the end, tone taking a bashful tint for a moment, coming then back to the sureness he had been giving off since the start, “I don't know if we're meant to be, and at this point I don't really care either way, a name written on my body won't change how I feel – and _anyway_ ,” he kept going, furrowing his brows even further, opening his mouth to then close it in an angry scowl.

He looked somewhat distressed, like he wasn't sure how to properly word what he was thinking, and the redhead felt like reaching out and holding him (while at the same time picking up his camera and snatching a picture of the unusual expression, that man made the photographer in him come out in the weirdest moments) – then he sighed, Aomine, sinking his hands into his coat's pockets, scrunching up his nose for a second.

“You're stronger than you think, Kagami,” he said, once again surprising Taiga – having him raise his brows and widen his lids, and then rolling his eyes at the redhead's expression.

“What I mean is that loving someone new doesn't mean you stop loving everyone else, alright, I don't know where you picked up that stupid way of thinking,” he elaborated, silencing Kagami's complaining with a wave of his hand, telling him to just _shut up and listen_.

“You lost two people you loved and you were strong enough to take it, to still be here – you're _strong_ , you're strong enough, alright, and even if you weren't...” he trailed off, finally moving his eyes away from Taiga's and letting his shoulders relax, inhaling and exhaling slowly, moving then his blue irises once more on the scarlet ones.

“Even if you weren't, I have no intention of leaving.”

\----

“That doesn't depend on you,” Kagami found himself saying after nearly a minute of silence, words falling from his lips in a hurried, annoyed whisper, and Aomine narrowed his eyes at him, set his lips in a thin line.

“I'll make it so it does,” he answered, determined and sure, and Taiga felt his anger flare up at those words, raised straighter on his seat and tightened his fists around the blanket still resting on him.

“You fucking _can't!_ What the hell, Aomine! You can't just decide whether to die or not, no one ever would if it were this easy, are you that fucking stupid?!” he exploded, feeling the heat rise to his face, his hands tremble a little – the other man's features hardened even further before him, his tongue clicked in annoyance, his shoulders and back stiffened.

“You just watch me, I'll show you if I can or not!” he roared, and they both looked at each other for a long minute, eyes narrow, brows furrowed – Kagami's anger didn't subside for the whole time, and what annoyed him even more was how fast his heart had started beating at the other's declaration, how in his mind hope had taken shape far too quickly for his likings.

Aomine was, in the end, the first to break eye contact – he sighed, raising both his heads to push his fingers between his blue locks in distressed motions, and then sighed again, pointing once more Taiga with a serious stare.

“I'm not leaving you, Kagami,” he said, tone softer but still as sure, and the redhead felt his breath hitch at the sound, his heart stutter in his ribcage, “I wouldn't die even if I were to be killed, I'm not leaving,” he went on, and Taiga found himself snorting at the sentence, smile pulling at the corners of his mouth without him being able to stop it.

“That makes no sense,” he pointed out, feeling the anger drain out a little, and Aomine rolled his eyes at him, let himself relax against his side once more.

“Shut up, I mean it,” he said, hands hidden inside his pockets and closeness of his arm warming Kagami from the inside, “I don't even care if you'll never tell me your name, I'll just have to keep on calling you _idiot_ for the rest of your life,” he completed, prompting an indignant _ohi!_ to leave the redhead's lips and then snorting, amused.

He looked at him with warm irises for a short moment, turning then around to point them faraway, unfocused.

“I'm not leaving,” he repeated once more, eyes set on the landscape outside the car and tone serious, steady, “I'm not, so just stop worrying already.”

And, even if his throat felt too tight to even let the air in, even if his heart was still too heavy to beat with ease – even if his fingers were still too cold, and the fear still hadn't let go of his mind, Kagami found himself trusting the other enough to reach out and hold his hand, close his eyes and force the breath in and out of his constricted lungs.

He trusted him enough to let his warmth and sureness seep into him, enough to nod and let his mind ignore how wrong everything could go, from that moment on – and, for the first time in ten months, he found himself drifting off without needing the exhaustion to forcibly shut his thoughts.

\----

Aomine had him stop at the first market they found on their way, the next day.

“We're gonna need more blankets and stuff, if we're really going up,” he had said, and Kagami had nodded his approval without problems – he needed to stop anyway, to ask about the train that would bring them to Hokkaido, and this was as good as any other chance they could get.

He'd been standing by the counter, the light of the midday sun warming him up as he watched Aomine browse through the shelves, when the old, frail lady had started talking to him, soft tone and happy smile.

“Is he yours?” she asked, making Kagami jump with surprise and turn around fast, and her smile just got a bit wider, at the reaction.

“What?” he asked, voice a bit strangled by the sudden question, prompting the lady to laugh of a warm and homely sound.

“I mean your name,” she specified, moving her clear, azure eyes on Aomine and then back on the redhead, and Kagami felt the blood rise to his cheeks at the assumption, looked away from her and moved a hand to scratch at his head.

“More like a pet, really,” he mumbled, somehow bashful, and the woman laughed again, amused – Taiga moved his eyes on her, took in the name-tag pinned to her chest and the word _manager_ neatly written over it, and then set his gaze once more on the blue haired man.

He was talking to a second old lady Kagami hadn't noticed until that moment, and his colors looked vibrant under the orange light of the sun, his smile and laugh completely genuine – he reached for his camera and took a picture without realizing, remembering seconds later about the manager still looking at him, feeling the redness spread over his cheekbones and ears in answer.

“It's nice,” she said, looking at him with a relaxed smile, “loving someone and being loved in return.”

Kagami, at the words, furrowed his brows and wriggled his nose; he thought about that sentence, and then associated its meaning with his relationship with Aomine – he thought about their banters and their jokes, about the man's smiles and his frowns, his heat and the calmness and steadiness he could make Taiga feel.

_Nice_ was the right word, maybe, and at the same time wasn't enough in the least – but still...

“It's also hard,” he said, eyes still set on the man further down in the shop, mouth held in a tight, down-turned line, and the woman let a little _oh_ leave her lips in surprise.

“How come?” she asked, genuinely interested, and Taiga scrunched up his nose and tilted his head to the side, unsure about how to put it.

“Anything could happen,” he settled on, “that's kinda... _scary_ , I guess.”

To his surprise, the woman's reaction to his words was a soft, amused laugh – he wondered if it was fine to glower at such an old, frail looking lady, realized that probably it wasn't, and then nearly let himself do it anyway.

“That's true for everything, kid – it's better if you try and focus on what _good_ could happen, instead of the bad things,” she said soon after, though, and Kagami stopped for a moment, widened his eyes at her in surprise.

Then she moved away from him, making her way around the counter and sitting on the chair behind it.

“Anyway, can I help you with anything?” she asked, still smiling at him, and Kagami raised a brow and made to open his mouth, when Aomine suddenly appeared at his side and pushed an armful of stuff in front of him.

“Yeah, thanks granny,” he said, grin stretching his lips, “we're buying these,” he declared, and Taiga went over the items with a fast motion of his eyes and then frowned, half-turning towards him.

“No, we're not! What's all this stuff?” he asked, pointing at at the mostly-made-of-useless-junk pile with a motion of his hand, and Aomine rolled his eyes at him and pushed him aside, settling before the old manager.

“It's my money, it's fine,” he said, starting to take the notes out as the woman ringed the items in front of her with a smile still bending her lips, and Kagami growled, covering his face with both his hands.

“What are you gonna do with all this stuff?” he asked exasperated, picking up the objects from the pile as he talked, “like a _clothes brush_? A mop, a dust cloth – what the _hell_ , Aomine?”

The man only shrugged in answer, though, taking the items away from the redhead's hands and putting them back down on the counter.

“We may need this stuff, and the lady back there said it's a deal,” he explained, tone as if talking to a dimwitted kid, and Taiga widened his eyes, moved his scarlet irises from the man to the manager and then back on Aomine, incredulous.

“No,” he said, tone definitive, starting to pick the objects up once again and pushing them between the blue haired man's arms, “no way in hell, _no_ , put everything back _right now_ ,” he ordered, glaring at the other as he tried to talk back, continuing staring until he stopped grumbling and did as he was told.

As Aomine's back disappeared once more between the shelves, complaints still falling from his lips in half mumbled grumbles, the old lady started laughing of an amused sound, shook her head, and Kagami turned around to look at her with narrow eyes and drawn in eyebrows.

“And here I thought I had distracted you for long enough,” she said, slightly sly tone hidden between her words, and Taiga found himself unable to stop the growl that left his lips in exasperation.

\----

“I was thinking about ditching the car, starting tomorrow,” Kagami said that night, as he stood next to the door to the bathroom of the motel room they had rented for the night – Aomine, from the other side, made a non-committal sound, barely audible over the noise of the water running in the sink, and Kagami sighed, letting his body rest against the wall, crossing his arms at his chest.

“We'll have to rent a new one once we're in Hokkaido, but I can't see any other way since we've gotta take the train,” he continued, raising a hand to scratch at his head, mess up his hair, and Aomine answered with another _hmm_ -sounding mumble – Taiga rolled his eyes, moving in front of the door and knocking two times.

“Are you even listening to me?” he asked, a bit annoyed, and then hit the wooden surface again when he got in answer just another hum.

“What the hell are you even doing in there? You've been holed up inside for–!” he started, raising his voice a bit and making to knock once more, when the room finally opened, door swinging towards the inside in a whoosh of cold air, and Aomine appeared on the other side – shirtless, still dripping wet, with an annoyed scowl on his face and _definitely too close_.

He took a step back on instincts, Kagami, swallowed without reason, and the other man rolled his eyes at him, stepped around his still in the way frame to reach for his duffel-bag.

“Yeah yeah, I'm listening – ditching the car, taking the train, renting another car, that's cool, what else do you want me to answer?” he drawled, tone vaguely annoyed – Taiga didn't really hear him, though, as his eyes run over the once again exposed tattoo, shadows darkening with the dip of his toned muscles, panther extending as the back curved.

Since that first time now over a week prior, Kagami had seen the ink covering the other's skin far more than just once: it was as if Aomine had given up on hiding it as soon as Taiga had proved that he didn't care, not bothering to dress while in the bathroom and sleeping shirtless at night if the AC permitted – the redhead would have liked to say he had gotten used to seeing it, by then, but truth was he really hadn't.

Every time his eyes landed on it, new shapes and details became clear to his mind, and he wanted to trace them with his fingers, catch them with his camera, taste the skin they rested upon. It was a feeling that became stronger every passing day, making him lose his train of thoughts far too easily, making it hard, for him, to stop himself from just reaching out and _touch_.

He moved a step towards Aomine, as the man looked inside his bag to try and find something to put on, and then he blinked a couple of times, shook his head to force his eyes away from the tattoo.

_Damn it_ , he mumbled under his breath, turning around and closing his lids, inhaling deeply and exhaling slowly – he could hear the other moving behind him, sounds of zippers opening and closing and steps on the carpeted floor, but didn't realize just how close he had once again gotten until he heard his voice coming from just behind himself.

“Are you gonna leave it wherever?” he asked, pulling a black and white striped shirt over his head, and Kagami turned around startled, eyes wide and brows high, “the car, I mea– what?”

Aomine rose an eyebrow at him, titled his head slightly to the side in confusion, and Taiga inhaled sharply at the mere foot between them, cursed under his breath as he tried – and  _failed –_ to find the strength to once more move away.

“ _What?_ ” the tan man asked again, his brows furrowing in annoyance at the other's expression, at his lack of reactions, and Kagami could see every shade of the man's skin, every line and imperfection – the still vaguely more yellow tone around his left eye, the smallest of the moles near his right eyebrow, the little cut on the left side of his jaw, the nearly invisible scar on the bridge of his nose – and everything he wanted to do was _move closer_.

“Kagami?” Aomine asked, tone now a little unsure, more concerned, and the redhead forced himself to bring his eyes away from the man's lips, in a futile attempt to distract himself from just how much he wanted to kiss him, right then and there.

He felt the pull the moment their gazes met – and it wasn't anything new, the same feeling he had been suppressing for two weeks already, like electricity running through the space between them, like there wasn't enough air and at the same time there was far too much, like everything but Aomine suddenly stopped existing.

He had been feeling like that since they had first met, in some way or another, and it had been annoying at first, weirdly pleasant later, constantly overwhelming, but he had managed, till that moment, to stop himself from doing anything he may have regretted in the future.

Now, though, the man's words –  _I'm not leaving,_ _my world revolves around you –_ resounded sweet in his ears, ringed clear in his mind, overlapping with what that old lady had told him not even a whole day prior –  _that's true for everything, you should focus on the good_ – and breathing was becoming even harder than usual, his throat tight, his heart beating too fast and still feeling as if ready to stop any moment.

He didn't realize he had raised his hands until he felt the skin of the other's warm cheeks against his freezing palms – jaw slack and blue eyes wide in surprise and, at that point, Kagami didn't even think about stopping before his mouth, after days of wondering how they tasted, how they felt like, finally pressed against Aomine's lips in a strong, determined push.

\----

The small gasp that left the taller man died between their skins, as Taiga sank his fingers between the short blue hair, pulled on them to get the other closer, pushed harder against those too chapped, slightly parted lips – Aomine's hands were on him not even a second later, one on the nape of his neck, the other against his left cheek, holding Kagami with all his strength against himself, as if wanting to make sure he wouldn't run away, not that time, not again.

Everything the redhead could feel was the other's scent, only barely covered by the soap he had just used, and the warmth seeping into him through every spot the man was touching – his ears were ringing, his hands tingling, and for however close he pushed against the other Taiga still felt like they were  _too far away_ .

“Aomine,” he mumbled, a whisper leaving his lips not even an inch away from the taller's, washing warm over his skin – a breathy, needy sound, and even Kagami himself didn't know exactly _what was it_ that he needed, but the blue haired man groaned against him, holding his face tighter, pushing his mouth once again over the redhead's.

Taiga felt the tongue push past his lips in a smooth move, and he sighed as it met his own, moaned as Aomine pressed inside of him, moved both his hands between his red locks and pulled him even further against himself – Kagami's own nails were nearly digging in the other's skin, pushing harder, pressing closer, and the air was starting to not feel enough anymore, his lungs aching for him to breath, and still he couldn't bring himself to move away.

It felt like drinking after a whole month spent under the sun, eating after an year of starvation – he was feeding off Aomine's moans and grunts, taking in every touch and every scent, and still he felt like he could never tire of the other, now that he finally had him.

(He felt so stupid, somewhere in the back of his head, for forcing himself to wait, for depriving himself of what could have as well been his only source of life.)

When Aomine bit his lower lip, making him gasp and take in a surprised breath, Kagami felt the long fingers loosening their hold on his hair, the other's mouth move away to hover just an inch away from him, every exhale washing over his wet skin, making shivers run along his spine.

He let his eyes open just enough to see the taller man look at him, half-lidded stare and red, swollen lips, disheveled hair and flushed skin, and Taiga felt his labored breath hitch once more at the sight, moved his arms to encircle the other's neck, pull him against himself.

“Fuck,” he mumbled, feeling as if the air in his lungs still wasn't enough, as if his throat was still too tight to let them properly work, and Aomine snorted, reaching his arms out to embrace his middle, hiding his too hot face between Kagami's shoulder and neck.

“Took you long enough,” he whispered, and Taiga could feel the movements of his lips in the way they brushed against his skin, making chills run along his back and all over his arms – he let the comment slip, the redhead, focusing on taking the air in and pushing it out, keeping his mind on the other's warmth, on his shapes pressed against his own body.

“I...” he started, voice breaking a little, and he closed his eyes and furrowed his brows, prompting the tan man to hold him a bit tighter, a bit closer.

“I– Aomine, I have no idea what I'm doing,” he admitted, pushing his face against the other's neck, finally feeling the apprehension clinging to his mind, making his heart seem too heavy – he felt the tips of his fingers frozen, his ears ringing with worry, and still he couldn't let the other go, couldn't make himself step away from his steady warmth.

“Do you regret it?” Aomine asked after a while, voice so low Kagami nearly couldn't catch it, and the redhead found himself clinging to his body tighter, pushing further into him, irrationally scared that the warm, tan arms would decide to let go any moment, now.

“No,” he answered, breathing the man in, feeling him relax around him as the syllable left his trembling lips in an unsteady whisper – then Aomine laughed, light and barely audible but openly happy, making his shoulders shake with it, pulling Taiga, if possible, even closer to himself.

“Then it's fine,” he said, relieved tone lacing his words and smile pressed against Kagami's skin, “I don't really know either.”

\----

Aomine's mouth tasted of mint toothpaste and chapstick, and Taiga was starting to think somehow that taste could be addicting, because moving away was looking a lot like dying, at the moment.

As he let the other's lower lip slid between his own, biting softly and sucking on it, Aomine let a low sigh leave his throat, made his tongue sink inside Kagami's mouth – the fingers of his right hand closed tight around the cloth on the redhead's back, his left one raised to hold onto his hair, making Taiga grunt and push closer to him still.

He didn't notice the other had started pulling him, make his feet move, until the back of Aomine's legs hit the edge of the closest bed, having him fall to sit on the mattress, making Kagami bend over to not have their lips separate – he moaned, the taller man, pulling on Taiga's hair a little to keep him close, and Kagami used his right knee to slide between the man's legs, pushing him further onto the mattress and then getting on it himself.

Aomine's fingers were still between his hair when they moved apart, breath heavy and lips red and shiny – his midnight blue eyes were looking at Kagami half-lidded, his mouth was slightly open, and Taiga had to suppress a groan at how _sexy_ that man could be, moving both his palms to cup his face, bringing him closer for another hard kiss.

As his tongue slid over the man's lips, the tan hands moved lower on his back, reaching for the edge of his sweater, pushing under it with cautious motions – hot touches on Kagami's burning skin, and he felt his breath hitch, a groan leave his already parted lips without him being able to do anything to stop it.

“Kagami...” Aomine moaned, so close Taiga could feel the man's mouth move against his own, and his voice was the sweetest sound the redhead had ever heard, made him want to drink the man in, touch every inch of his warm body.

He pressed a kiss on his lips, open-mouthed and wet, making the other groan and sigh, and then let his tongue trace its way to his neck, biting at his jaw, sucking on the tender skin under his ear, as Aomine's voice kept on coming out in soft grunts and drawn out moans – he pressed an open palm on the taller's shoulder, pushing him down on his back, under himself, and a soft, breathy sound left the other's chest in surprise.

“Let me undress you,” he whispered, slowly moving his hands along the tan man's sides, gripping at the edge of the cloth and letting the back of his fingers brush against the smooth, hot skin of his hips – the sound that left Aomine at his words was nearly a mewl, caught in the back of his throat, and his eyes were closed, his eyebrows furrowed, when he nodded his approval with frantic motions, moved his hands to hold onto Kagami's hair and kiss him once more.

“Yes, _fuck_ _yes,_ come on,” he mumbled, needy, just a breath away from Taiga's lips, and the redhead groaned at the sound, gripped the shirt tighter and dragged it upwards with a swift, impatient move.

Aomine watched him, liquid gaze and disheveled hair, as he sat back on his knees to pull his own sweater off himself – the redhead let his eyes linger on the man under himself, smooth skin and defined abs, completely open, totally _his_ , and his breath caught in his throat for a second.

He groaned again, Kagami, as he lowered himself to kiss and suck at the other's neck, slide his tongue down to his left clavicle, kiss at the clear space on his chest, bite at his nipple – Aomine's voice hitched and dissolved into moans with every movement Taiga made, tan hands gripping tight around his scarlet locks, pressing closer and closer and _closer_ , and the redhead could feel how hard he was getting in the way his hips were becoming restless, pulling back against the mattress, pushing hard to meet his own.

“Take my pants off too, Kagami, _come on_ ,” he cried out, nearly begging him, squirming under him in impatience, but Taiga just licked and bit his nipple, pressing an open palm on the right side of his hips to hold him still.

“Wait,” he said, a breathy whisper that had warm air wash over the other's oversensitive skin, making him moan again – the redhead moved his free hand to lightly trace the hem of Aomine's jeans, moving then higher, over his sides and abs, letting the tip of his nose slide in the dip between the man's pectorals, taking in every curve of his body, every scar and every mole.

Aomine's hands tightened around his hair again, as a groan left his throat, making his chest tremble under Kagami's touch; he pulled him upwards, crashing his wet, open lips against Taiga's and kissing him deeply, with need, as his hips started moving again and with more force, hard cock pressing against the redhead's just as aroused one, making Kagami moan and tighten his hold on his hips, push harder into him.

As the tan fingers moved away from the redhead's hair, sliding down along his jaw and neck, over his chest, tracing the scars on his side, Kagami felt shivers run down his spine, making him squirm in sudden impatience, having him sigh when the man finally reached his pants, fumbled to undo button and zip – the feeling of the fingertips brushing along his groin had a moan slip from Taiga's mouth, long and drawn out, making Aomine's breath hitch in return, and the redhead bit the man's lower lip and finally reached for the other's pants, undoing and sliding them down to his tights in a hurried motion.

Aomine pushed his hips against Kagami as soon as he felt the constriction of the denim let up, making the other's cock press into his hip, dragging his own along the redhead's groin, and Taiga groaned and moaned, pulling the man's pants all the way off and then doing the same with his own, raising his his hands once more to hold onto the other's sides, tight enough he may have as well been leaving marks.

“ _Fuck,_ oh god,” Aomine moaned, moving his arms to circle the other's shoulders, pulling him against himself without stopping his hips' motions, and Kagami pressed another kiss to his panting, open mouth, sliding his tongue inside, sucking one the other's own and then biting his lower lip, having a hiss hitch the man's already labored breathing.

“I– Aomine, I need–” he started, feeling his chest heavy, his heart rushing blood too loudly in his ears, as Aomine's hips kept pushing against him, moaning and groaning right into his mouth, breath crashing on his overheated skin.

He moved his left arm to circle the his middle, Kagami, turning him over in a swift motion, making a surprised gasp leave the swollen lips, and then pressed over him, mouth kissing and biting at the nape of his neck, one hand holding his hips up and the other sliding along his muscles, cock pressing against the man's ass – Aomine moaned and mewled under him, pushing and grinding, arms crossed around his head and red face hidden between them.

“I need you,” Taiga sighed against his left ear, sucking and licking at its shell, and the other groaned, pleas of _fuck_ and _yes_ and _come on_ 's falling from his swollen lips in panting breaths.

“ _Kagami_ ,” he cried, pushing more insistently against him, and the redhead moved his hands to thumb at the hem of the man's boxer briefs, dragging the pads in the v-shape of his hips, dipping his fingertips under the cloth and then back out again – his mouth slid along the shape of the tattoo on the man's back, kissing every line, tracing every curve, making Aomine moan and squirm, turn his head to the side to look at him with watery, half-lidded eyes and parted, panting lips.

As his mouth reached the edge of the man's boxers, Kagami moved his hands to slide along the other's tights, gripping at them, tracing the quivering muscles – he dragged the tip of his tongue along the skin above the hem of the cloth, dragging his lips down on the man's still covered ass in wet, open mouthed kisses, lightly biting through the material.

Aomine's breath hitched, as shivers run down his inked spine, as the broken version of Kagami's name left his lips in needy breaths, and Taiga groaned at the sounds the man was making, raised a hand to palm at the other's covered erection, pulling a strangled mewl out of his throat, making him start grinding once more.

“ _Fuck_ , how are you this fucking hot,” the redhead moaned, feeling his own arousal urge him to move faster, and he raised a hand to slid off the other's boxers, kissing the now exposed skin – Aomine trembled under him, and Taiga could feel how hard he was directly on his right palm, precome wetting his thumb as he slid its pad over the leaking head.

“Shit, we don't have any lube,” he groaned in a hot, distressed whisper, moving his free hand on the man's left cheek and spreading him open, licking at his hole, making Aomine squirm and grunt, curses falling from his lips in moaned breaths.

“We– _fuck_ , do that– again,” he groaned, hiding his face between his arms, panting straight into the sheets of the bed, as Kagami sucked slowly at his hole and then slid his tongue over it, right hand still touching his cock with too light movements, sliding down to palm at his balls with distracted motions, making long, drawn out moans leave Aomine's stuttering chest.

Taiga could feel the muscles twitch under his lips, and he moved his left index to trace around them, pull the skin a little to ease the man up, let the tip of his tongue slide inside, and the other let a long string of _shit_ and _fuck_ and _god_ leave his lips, moaned the redhead's name with drawn out vocals and needy tone.

“Kaga–mioh _shit_ – we do, we– have it, _fuck_ you're too skilled with that fu– cking tongue _do that again_ ,” he moaned, pushing back against the redhead, and it took Taiga a couple of seconds to understand what the other had said – then he stopped, circling Aomine's hips with his right arm to not let him fall, moving away to look at him.

“Why the hell did you stop,” the taller man complained, equal parts pouting and moaning, pushing his face against the mattress and breathing heavily – Taiga let his eyes trace the man's figure and shapes, take in the flushed skin, the trembling legs, the disheveled hair and red marks on his neck, and he licked his own lips without thinking, bit the lower one to stop himself from just going down on him again.

“Do we really?” he asked instead, moving his irises to Aomine's still hidden face, and the man nodded and mumbled an half audible _yeah, let me just–_ , wriggling then his hips to make the other let go – Kagami watched him as he crawled across the bed, letting his gaze linger on the way the tattoo on his back covered the right side of his ass as well, yellows and greens and blues shading the smooth skin, and he had to forcibly stop himself from moving towards him and start touching and licking and kissing him again when the man bended over to reach for his bag, deciding instead to use that time to free himself of his own boxers.

“Here,” Aomine then said, raising the hand holding a purple lube packet and a condom – with his eyes still set on the other's inked skin, Taiga reached out, ignoring the offered objects to hold onto his hips, making the man fall on his back and pulling him once more under himself, pressing a deep kiss to his startled lips and having him moan inside his mouth.

Tan arms moved to circle the redhead's neck, pulling him closer, holding himself against his chest harder, as Aomine's tongue run along Kagami's lips, pushed inside, letting his hips raise to press onto the other's in stuttering motions, causing Taiga to growl and moan – he blindly moved a hand to look for the lube the taller had discarded on the bed, moving then away to open it with his teeth, empty it on his fingers, and for the whole time Aomine didn't stop grinding against him, didn't let go of his shoulders.

The redhead moved his mouth to the corner of the other's lips, sliding down to his jaw and then sucking on his neck, leaving bite marks just above his left clavicle, a red hickey in the middle of the empty space on his chest, dragging his tongue lower and lower, all the while sliding his lubed-up index over the muscles of his hole – Aomine's fingers moved to hold onto his hair, as moans and mewls and grunts left his once more panting mouth, as his lips silently formed Kagami's name over and over again, like a plea.

“Come on, come on, I'm not made of glass _come on_ ,” he urged, pushing down against the finger, breath hitching as the tip slid inside him, and Taiga dragged his lips to his right hip, lightly bit at the skin there as he let himself sink further in.

Aomine's muscles were twitching around him, moans and hisses falling from his mouth at every movement of the other's hand – Kagami made his tongue lick at the salt on the man's skin, moved his right hand to palm at the neglected erection, and the other pulled harder at his scarlet locks, curses falling from his shiny, parted lips.

Taiga let his finger slowly move in and out, crooked the tip and dragged the digit along Aomine's walls, until the other started trembling under him, pushed against his hand with needy motions – he let the middle slide inside just as slowly, closing his right hand round the leaking erection and starting pumping, brushing his thumb over the tip, spreading precome; the taller man moaned when both his index and middle fingers were finally completely inside, hissed as Taiga began to slowly scissor them, turn them around, and every grunt and every groan had Kagami hiss and mewl back, trying to suppress his need to just push inside the other already, dragging his groin against the sheets to relive the pressure at least a little.

“Ka– _Kagami_ ,” Aomine moaned, eyes half-lidded and watery, teeth digging into his lower lip, and _god_ , he was _so_ gorgeous, “come on, I'm– I'm gonna _come_ just–” he continued, pushing his hips down every time the redhead pressed in, bucking into his fist with increasing speed, and Taiga moaned and moved up to lick at the man's lips, taking his fingers away from the other's body and reaching for the condom, opening it with trembling hands.

Aomine groaned at the loss, pulling Kagami closer against himself as he put the protection on, kissing him deeply, running his fingers through his hair, and the redhead couldn't contain a strained _fuck, you're so damn sexy_ that had the man under him moan and push against him, pressing his hard cock to Kagami's abs.

As Taiga's tip slid inside the other, careful movements and too heavy breaths, Aomine closed his eyes and let his nails sink into the white back, grounding himself, forcing his muscles to relax – the redhead's lips stayed on his own the whole time, his hands held onto his hips and guided his movements with a calmness he didn't feel, until the other raised his legs to cross them behind Kagami, pushed his hips down towards him.

“Come on,” Aomine sighed against his lips, scratchy sound coming directly from his throat, “I'm– _fine,_ get on with it,” he moaned, hot breath right over Taiga skin, low-lidded eyes pointed directly into his scarlet irises – the redhead couldn't help the groan that left his chest, control finally snapping, and he pressed his mouth against the other's in a panting, needy kiss, let himself sink completely into him with a single, fast motion.

“ _Fuck_ –” cried out Aomine, eyebrows furrowing and muscles tightening around Taiga, and Kagami forced himself to stay put, to let the other get used to the stretch, before pulling back and sinking in again, drinking in every moan the other let out directly from his lips, circling him with one arm and holding him close, reaching out to stroke him with his free hand.

“Fuck,” the man repeated, hands still holding onto Kagami's back, nails digging into his skin, “fuck, fuck, _fuck_ , shit–” he kept on groaning, breath hitching with every push of Taiga's hips, every pull of his hand on his dick, and the redhead moaned and groaned over his mouth, let his tongue lick at his lips and slide in, and everything he could think about was how the man's insides were so hot he felt like melting.

“ _Aomine_ –” he grunted, sound broken and full of need, and his hips' movements started to be erratic, his climax getting closer and closer every time he sank into the other – the tan man's breath hitched at Kagami's voice, caught in his throat at every shorter, closer push, until his own hips stuttered, stilling as his teeth bit into his lower lip and a pained moan left his chest, hot semen spurting over Taiga's still moving hand, covering his own abs and chest.

Kagami groaned low in his throat at the sight, hid his face between Aomine's neck and shoulder and kept on stroking him throughout his climax – it took him other three thrusts to follow the man, vision whitening for a second that felt like hours, moan getting stuck in the back of his throat, as Aomine's fingers moved through his hair and pulled him back towards his mouth, kissing him slow and tired, until Taiga's arms started trebling, until he pulled out and fell, spent, at his side.

\----

Kagami felt pleasant chills run through his spine as he rested on his side, Aomine's hands moving lightly over his scars and his warm breath ghosting rhythmically over the skin at the base of his neck.

“It sure must have hurt,” the blue haired man mumbled, eyes fixed on the slashes, and Kagami let a sigh escape his lips, run his open palms along the other's back in measured motions.

“They don't anymore,” he whispered back, letting Aomine rub the pad of his thumb across the middle one, from hip to ribcage and then down again, as a low, prolonged _hmmmm_ left his closed lips and shook his chest and throat.

He sighed, moving his tan arms to encircle Kagami's back and settling with his head under his chin, having their legs entangle under the sheets and comforters covering their still necked bodies.

Taiga breathed in and then out, closing his eyes, letting his chest rise and fall in time with Aomine's – it felt weird, to be so incredibly relaxed, so pleasantly exhausted after months and months and _months_ of restlessness, and he let himself sink in the sensation, let his mind stay clear of any worry he may get back with the coming morning; he tried to focus on the ache in his arms and legs, the warmth of the man pressed flush against his chest, the smell of his hair lightly tickling at his nose.

It felt so nice, finally having Aomine between his arms.

(There in the dark of the night, remembering all the reasons why he had been holding himself back seemed even harder than usual, made him wonder if he shouldn't have let go since the start.)

(He felt so whole, right then and there, that it sure seemed like the right thing he should have done.)

His lids were starting to feel heavy when the blue haired man next opened his mouth, whisper barely audible above the humming of the air conditioning.

“Hey, Kagami,” he murmured, words spoken not even an inch away from the skin of the redhead's chest, and Taiga made a sound with his throat in answer, not bothering to open his eyes, still moving his hands along the other man's spine.

Aomine kissed the skin above his heart, a soft, barely there touch, rubbing then the tip of his cold nose over that same space – Kagami sighed in contentment, lowered his head to place a cast touch of his lips on the man's blue hair, and the tan arms tightened around him a little, the toned body pressed closer against him.

“Will you tell me your name, now?” he asked then, making Taiga's muscles stiffen, his eyes widen in surprise – he opened his mouth, closed it again, and another soft sigh left his lips, as he held the man closer to himself.

“I...” he started, furrowing his brows and biting his lower lip, and then nodded – a short motion that had the taller man hold his breath in for a moment, raise his head to look directly at the scarlet irises.

“Not now, though,” Kagami added soon after, making Aomine's eyes narrow, his lips tighten in a small line – he continued talking before the man could say anything, hurrying the words out of his mouth in fast whispers, “I will, I swear, _soon_. Just– bear with me for a bit longer.”

The man between his arms kept looking at him for a whole minute still, focused, unmoving – in the end he nodded, though, pressing again against Taiga's wide chest and breathing in.

“Anyway it's fine even if you don't tell me,” he mumbled, rubbing once more his nose over Kagami's skin – the redhead could hear the vague pout in his tone, feel it in the down-turned lips brushing against his chest as he spoke, and he snorted a little under his breath, assured him again that he _would_ , in the near future, tell him.

It was another ten minutes of silence before the still air was filled again with their hushed tones – this time the first to open his mouth was Taiga, a frown on his face and teeth biting his lower lip.

“Do you always bring lube with yourself?” he asked out of the blue, startling a snort out of Aomine, having his shoulders shake slightly in silent laughter – then he shook his head, pressed harder against Kagami's chest.

“I had just bought it,” he explained, grin still bending his lips, and Kagami raised a brow at the sentence, looked at him with narrow eyes – the question of _when?_ went unspoken, clear anyway in the look he was giving, as the other man started to move his fingers along Taiga's back, bended his neck upwards enough to plant a kiss on the redhead's jaw.

“While you talked about trains with the old lady at the market,” he grinned, moving his hands to intertwine his long fingers with the crimson hair, and Kagami looked at him in surprise for a moment, rolling then his eyes at him in incredulity.

“Pretty confident, weren't you,” he snorted, moving his open palms to rest on the small of Aomine's back, and the man laughed in answer, short and amused, as he pulled the redhead down towards himself.

“Was I wrong?” he asked in a mumble when his mouth was a breath away from Taiga's skin, smirk bending his inviting lips, “and anyway, I may have used it by myself if worse came to worst.”

As the image took shape in the front of Kagami's mind, a low growl shook his throat and his brows furrowed, making Aomine's grin only grow bigger – Taiga didn't let him talk anymore before pressing his lips against his waiting mouth, and the still smiling man didn't seem to mind one bit.

\----

They left the car in the parking lot outside the station – stuffed into their bags everything that could be of use in the future with close to no difficulty and left everything else on the backseat or inside the hood.

(Aomine asked Kagami if he wanted to make a little speech for their departing friend _like in One Piece_ , Taiga jabbed him in the side and told him to shut up with a smirk bending his lips.)

The doors of the train had just closed, the vehicle slowly starting its trip, when Aomine reached out a hand to move Taiga's head towards himself, pushing it to rest on his left shoulder – the redhead widened his lids in surprise, moved his irises to look at the blue haired man, but the midnight eyes were pointed on the landscape outside of the window, right palm covering the lower half of the tan face and brows drawn in the middle.

“You should try and sleep,” he said, a mumble nearly lost in the noise of the moving train, as his long fingers still held Kagami close to himself, “you were awake last night too, right?”

The redhead, as the words left the other's mouth, felt a small smile press at the corner of his lips – there was fondness, taking shape inside his chest, and he nearly couldn't suppress a laugh at himself.

“I did sleep,” he answered, moving anyway to more comfortably rest his cheek against Aomine's shoulder and closing his lids, “a bit. More or less,” he added then, and a snort had the other's frame shake under him.

“Yeah, right. For, like, three minutes top,” he said, rolling his eyes at the redhead, “and then spent the rest of the time taking pictures of me,” he completed, muttering a soft _you're a moron if you thought I didn't notice_ , and Kagami shook his head, snorted at the other, but didn't bother with a verbal answer.

It was the truth, after all – he hadn't _really_ slept, only found himself dozing off more or less regularly throughout the night, but that was still more than he could have said a week prior, and it was still a step forward, for him.

It wasn't like he could force himself to spend a whole night asleep, after all, and while Aomine's closeness _did_ help, did calm him enough for his mind to let go of the most frightening thoughts, he still needed some time to get back to being able to relax for that long.

It was nice, anyway, having the other worry about him – how the man's left arm reached out to encircle his waist, pulling Kagami's frame closer against his side, the way he mumbled a barely audible _just rest for a bit, damn it,_ it all had Taiga's muscle relax, his body take in the other's heat, and he couldn't suppress the smile bending his lips.

He didn't exactly sleep during that train ride either, but it was fine – he felt fine, Aomine made him feel, for the first time in over ten months, _incredibly_ _fine_.

\----

Outside the train station of their destination the sky was gray and the air biting, snow piled up on the ground and over every roof and tree in sight, and Kagami barely gave the other the time to properly take in the whiteness of the scenery, complain about how damn cold the air felt on his skin and inside his nose, before grabbing him by the arm and pulling him on a small buss on their right ready to take off.

“Where are we going, now?” Aomine asked, one hand holding the handle above his head and the other arm still in the clutch of Taiga's fingers, and the redhead pointed an index outside the window, towards a mountain not so far away.

It was a place Kagami had once, long time prior, seen in a picture a colleague of his had taken – _when you're up there_ , the woman had said, _it's like the rest of the world suddenly disappears_.

“It's just you and that infinite expense of white, it's pretty cool,” she had explained him with a content smile on her lips, “makes you wonder if there ever really was anything bad in the universe.”

Taiga had remembered their conversation exactly twenty-three days before that moment, and had rolled in his mind the idea of visiting that _magical_ _place_ long enough for it to stop sounding just as stupid as it had at first – that was how he explained it to Aomine, as they stood in the middle of a snow-covered field, arms resting against one another and breath condensing in the air before their mouths.

“I thought I'd stop seeing blood everywhere, if I came up here,” he mumbled, as he felt his cheeks slowly turn into ice, sank his face between the folds of the scarf around his neck to warm them up at least a bit, “and I thought I would keep going north, someplace whiter and emptier, in case I didn't.”

Aomine hummed slowly, considering, and Taiga knew his nose and ears had become red even without having to turn and look at him – they always were when the air was cold enough, and Kagami still hadn't found a good reason to stop finding it endearing.

“Did it work?” the man asked then, without moving his attention on the redhead, keeping his eyes on the snow in front of him, and Taiga thought about it for a while, before answering.

He thought about the man at his side and the landscape before him, thought about how the relaxed feeling permeating his every nerve came from the heat emanating from the other's arm and not the cold at his feet – thought about how Aomine had always made the world around them disappear, about how, as long as the man was by his side, the red of his memories easily turned into a deep, midnight shade of blue.

“Yeah,” he answered in the end, reaching for the camera in his pocket and turning around to snap a picture of the tall, tan man, “I guess so.”

Aomine let another long _hmmmm_ leave his throat, wriggling his nose and barely repressing a sneeze.

“All's good, then,” he said, sniffling a bit, and Kagami snorted and reached for his gloved hand, intertwined their fingers with slow motions.

They watched the snow in silence for a while, bodies slowly getting colder wherever they weren't touching each other, the blue haired man sneezing once in a while and the redhead coughing, wriggling his nose at the cold.

“Hey, Aomine,” he said in the end, without moving his irises on him, tightening his grip on the other's hand and receiving a noncommittal sound in answer.

“Let's take a plane and move to America, after this,” he continued, tone low but eager, and the man finally turned around to look at him, raised a brow at the sentence – Kagami's lips upturned into a bright grin, as he pulled the other a bit closer to himself, held his hand even tighter, “Los Angeles is great, I lived there as a kid – you're gonna love it, it never snows.”

Aomine looked at him for a moment longer in astonishment, lids still wide, jaw still slack, and then a smirk bended his lips in what the redhead had learned to recognize as genuine happiness, maybe eagerness as well.

“Sounds like a plan,” he said, reaching over to place a cold kiss on the other's mouth – Kagami laughed under his breath, pressed his lips against the man's once more, and then took a step back, eyes still on him.

“Taiga,” he said, sinking his hands in the pockets of his coat, “my name's Taiga,” he repeated, still grinning, and Aomine's lids widened in surprise, his mouth opened and closed a couple of times without uttering a sound.

“Daiki,” he answered, open smile blooming on his chapped lips, “I'm Daiki.”

Kagami let those two syllables sink inside him for a bit – took in the way his heart constricted as they left the other's mouth, the way his throat felt tight and his stomach upside-down. He thought about how warm he was feeling even while immersed in the snow, about how he wouldn't have been able to stop smiling even if he had tried to force himself to, and raised a hand to rest on the left side of his own chest, took a step forward to place the other on Aomine's.

“Do you think my name's written over here, now?” he asked in a whisper, as his heartbeat felt completely wrong, too fast and slow at the same time, and his mouth still didn't seem to want to stop stretching.

Aomine – _Daiki_ , he thought, making himself smile even harder – moved his arms around him, tightening them enough to press Taiga's body flush against his own, and moved his face to nose at his throat, kiss his jaw and cheek and lips.

“Either way is fine,” he said, just a breath away from the redhead's mouth, “you're mine either way, I'm not letting you go.”

Kagami could feel his heartbeat even through the many layers of clothes – fast, strong, clear, and he moved to embrace him back, press a bruising kiss to his waiting lips.

“Yeah,” he nodded, a little out of breath, feeling the laugh bubble from his lips and not doing anything to stop it, “either way is fine.”

**Author's Note:**

> Has the name appeared has it not the world may never know (maybe the only way to know would be pick up the manga and check something a certain Aomine has said about destiny)(maybe)(I'm just saying) - anyway, if you've read all of it first, thank you, second, I'm sorry. It's such a weird fic. MAH.


End file.
